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• College of Law home
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• > Katherine M. Porter

Katherine M. Porter

Professor Katherine Porter joined the College of Law faculty in 2005. During the current academic year (09-10), she is a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of California, Berkeley Law.

Porter is an expert on bankruptcy and consumer credit law who conducts empirical research on families in financial distress. She is a principal investigator in the 2007 Consumer Bankruptcy Project and a fellow of the Bankruptcy Data Project at Harvard. Her empirical project, the Mortgage Study, shed early light on the practices of mortgage servicers and the challenges that homeowners face in trying to save their homes from foreclosure. Her current research examines the consequences and outcomes of severe financial distress. With funding from the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges, Porter has begun a new study to gather data on people who drop out of the bankruptcy process without discharging their debts. She is also writing a book on the ways in which financial hardship affects people’s marriages, children, employment, and financial decision-making.

Porter’s recent articles include "Saving up for Bankruptcy" (Georgetown Law Journal 2009), "Misbehavior and Mistake in Bankruptcy Mortgage Claims" (Texas Law Review 2008), and "Did Bankruptcy Reform Fail?" (American Bankruptcy Law Journal 2009, awarded Editors' Prize). In 2009, she was selected to direct the University of Iowa's Obermann Center for Advanced Studies Summer Seminar. She is the editor and a chapter author of a book resulting from that interdisciplinary seminar, tentatively titled Broke: How Debt Undermines the Middle Class. Before entering academia, Porter clerked for Judge Richard Sheppard Arnold of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. She then worked as an associate at Stoel Rives LLP in Portland, Oregon, where she practiced with the firm’s bankruptcy and creditors’ rights group.

Porter teaches bankruptcy, commercial law, and consumer law. She accepts press inquiries in these areas and on credit cards, mortgage foreclosure, and predatory or high-yield lending. She has testified several times before Congress on consumer credit issues and has made media appearances on ABC Nightline, The Today Show, National Public Radio and in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Newsweek. She is a co-founder and contributor to Credit Slips, a blog about credit and bankruptcy.

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