Professor Susan Block-Lieb, a College fellow and the Cooper Family Chair of Urban Legal Studies at Fordham University, NY, became the College’s Scholar - in -Residence this fall, and took the time from her very busy schedule to discuss her new
role and current issues with the Columns at NCBJ 2019:
C: Welcome to the position of Scholar in Residence of the College. You were inducted as a fellow in 2003…tell us about your NEW Role.
SBL: I was honored to be asked by College leaders to serve in this prestigious position. I’m cognizant of the fact that I am the first woman to serve in this position, and want to make the most of it. It’s a great opportunity to re-engage with practitioners from my current academic position.
C: Your CV on the Fordham website includes 17 impressive pages of your work in the insolvency area. You practiced at Skadden and Latham & Watkins for several years. How does that practice experience inform your work today?
SBL: My private practice experiences provided a window into chapter 11 practices that aren’t readily apparent to academics and others in academia. This background has been invaluable to provide context for understanding what my students and I can read in the public record. For example, my case work had a focus on airline reorganizations. Those cases had a rich interface of labor law and bankruptcy law, downward spiraling cash flows, gargantuan sunk costs, and other dynamics that the case law doesn’t make clear. As a young practitioner, I enjoyed
interacting with management to learn about
finance and business issues and they interface with the law. I once flew on a People’s Express flight on the eve of their filing with a C-level
executive who ditched me wheels-up to go undercover as a flight attendant and get direct feedback from the passengers onboard. In was an early lesson on the importance of researching both deeply and broadly on issues.
C: How did you transition from practice to academia?
SBL: I started as a law clerk for Bankruptcy Judge Joel Lewittes in the Southern District -- a great experience that was cut short when the judge retired in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s case in Marathon. After that, I had the opportunity to work in the Judiciary Committee in the House of Representative during their consideration of the 1984 Amendments to the Bankruptcy Code. I also had a solid foundation from my years in practice at Skadden during the 1980s; after teaching for a while, I reengaged with chapter 11 practices and practitioners, working “of counsel” at Latham in the early 2000s. I was fortunate to have some great mentors along the way: my father-in-law, Dick Lieb; J.J. White and Frank Kennedy during law school; after I graduated, Larry King, Michael Cook at Skadden, and Bob Rosenberg at Latham, Mike Sigal, Don Bernstein, Burt Lifland and Chris Redmond while observing at UNCITRAL.
C: Fast forward to your decades of work in law school education. Do you see any trends that have enhanced legal education or to the contrary been obstacles in advancing legal education?
SBL: The trend in legal education has been to push faculty to modernize teaching methods
which has included a number of innovations of the years – providing students more frequent feedback has been one focus. The model of one exam at the end of the year has given way to more opportunities for midyear feedback. We have also seen an increase in use of technology to gather data from students. In addition, the trend is to lessen the historical focus on litigation and
10
An Interview with Scholar-in-Residence Susan Block-Lieb
Steven N. Berger, Engelman Berger, P.C.
Co-Editor, College Columns