Lauren E. Willis

About

Lauren E. Willis is Associate Dean for Research, Professor of Law, and Rains Senior Research Fellow at Loyola Law School Los Angeles and has held visiting appointments at Harvard, Cornell, and the University of Pennsylvania. Willis’s scholarship focuses on the intersection of consumer psychology, market structure, and law. She is a leading critic of the use of financial education, disclosures, and “nudges” (default settings) in consumer policymaking. Her recent work develops a fresh approach to consumer law, one that would require firms to demonstrate that their customers understand key product and service features or are using the products or services suitably (for an introduction to the approach, see Performance-Based Consumer Law, 82 U. CHI. L. REV. 1309 (2015)). Before entering academia, Willis was a litigator in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and worked with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on predatory mortgage lending litigation. Willis currently serves in an advisory capacity to the American Law Institute’s Project on the Restatement of the Law of Consumer Contracts, the Center for Responsible Lending, the Walter Cronkite Project’s FoolProof Consumer Education Program, and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.

Work

Loyola Marymount University Loyola Law School
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Associate Dean for Research, Professor of Law, and Rains Senior Research Fellow

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Cornell University Law School
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Visiting Professor of Law

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Harvard Law School
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Robert Braucher Visiting Professor of Law

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University of Pennsylvania School of Law
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Visiting Associate Professor

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Stanford Law School
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Lecturer and Fellow

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U.S. Department of Justice
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Trial Attorney

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Brown, Goldstein & Levy, LLP
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Associate

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Judge Francis D. Murnaghan, Jr., U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4 th Circuit
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Law Clerk

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US Department of Justice
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Law Clerk

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White and Case LLP
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Law Clerk

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Education

Stanford Law School
United States of America

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Juris Doctor with Distinction

Wesleyan University
United States of America

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Bachelor of Arts with High Honors

Publications

Why Not Privacy by Default?

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SSRN Electronic Journal

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Performance-Based Consumer Law

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SSRN Electronic Journal

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Stabilize Home Mortgage Borrowers, and the Financial System Will Follow

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SSRN Electronic Journal

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When Nudges Fail: Slippery Defaults

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SSRN Electronic Journal

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Financial Education: Lessons Not Learned & Lessons Learned

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SSRN Electronic Journal

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Deception by Design

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Harvard Journal of Law & Technology

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Deception by Design

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Harvard Journal of Law & Technology (Harvard JOLT)

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The Faulty Foundation of the Draft Restatement of Consumer Contracts

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Yale Journal on Regulation

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The Faulty Foundation of the Draft Restatement of Consumer Contracts

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Yale Journal on Regulation

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Spokeo Misspeaks

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Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

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The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Quest for Consumer Comprehension

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RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences

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Finance-Informed Citizens, Citizen-Informed Finance: An Essay Occasioned by the International Handbook of Financial Literacy

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Journal of Social Science Education

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Performance-Based Remedies: Ordering Firms to Eradicate Their Own Fraud

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Performance-Based Remedies: Ordering Firms to Eradicate Their Own Fraud

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Law and Contemporary Problems

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Spokeo Misspeaks

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Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

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Information Privacy Law Scholars' Brief in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins

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other

Performance-Based Consumer Law

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University of Chicago Law Review

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Performance-Based Consumer Law

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University of Chicago Law Review

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Why Not Privacy by Default?

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Berkeley Technology Law Journal

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Why Not Privacy by Default

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Berkeley Technology Law Journal

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Financial Education: Lessons Not Learned & Lessons Learned

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Loyola-LA Legal Studies Paper No. 2013-4

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When Nudges Fail: Slippery Defaults

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University of Chicago Law Review

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When Nudges Fail: Slippery Defaults

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University of Chicago Law Review

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The Financial Education Fallacy

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American Economic Review

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The Financial Education Fallacy

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American Economic Review

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Introduction: Why Didn't the Courts Stop the Mortgage Crisis

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Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

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Evidence and Ideology in Assessing the Effectiveness of Financial Literacy Education

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San Diego Law Review

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Will the Mortgage Market Correct - How Households and Communities Would Fare if Risk Were Priced Well

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Connecticut Law Review

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Will the Mortgage Market Correct? How Households and Communities Would Fare If Risk Were Priced Well

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Connecticut Law Review

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Against Financial Literacy Education

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Iowa Law Review

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Against Financial-Literacy Education

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Iowa Law Review

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Stabilize Home Mortgage Borrowers, and the Financial System Will Follow

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Loyola-LA Legal Studies Paper No. 2008-28

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Decisionmaking and the Limits of Disclosure: The Problem of Predatory Lending: Price

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Maryland Law Review

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Decisionmaking and the Limits of Disclosure: The Problem of Predatory Lending: Price

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Maryland Law Review

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