Customer Reviews

Secured Credit: A Systems Approach

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

My professor assigned this book for Secured Transactions (Art 9) and we read the entire book. The book takes you through secured (with comparisons to unsecured credit) transactions from cradle to grave. The problem sets are particularly helpful for developing a sound understanding of secured credit and always include at least one thoughtful policy question at the end of the questions.

The book also provides a thorough section on secured creditors and bankruptcy.

This edition of the book was published on the cusp of the financial crisis, and the authors address it in a manner that does not make the book outdated, even now in late 2009.

To get the most value from the book - pay attention to the problem sets & complete them even if your professor doesn't assign them. The book was self-explanatory, but the problem sets test whether you can actually apply the UCC and case law to real-life lending problems.

It's a must for any aspiring transactional/financial services industry lawyer.

P.S. Don't bother buying the E & E Secured Transactions book - absolutely unnecessary if you do the problem sets in the textbook.

This book is good at explaining things at the individual chapter level, but completely out of order for a common sense understanding of secured transactions. I found it helpful to supplement this book with a Gilbert's commercial outline to understand the proper progression of a secured transaction. That being said, the authors do a decently good job at explaining things and I hated it less than other text books.

This book provides more than cases and code sections; it provides the context that helps one see how and why the rules are what they are.

First: a general, easy to understand, layman's, explanations of the law.

Second: an example or case that shows how that law operates in the real world.

Third: problems at the end of assignments that require one to delve deeper, to understand as lawyer and not merely as a layman.

This book does an excellent job of first guiding the reader through the forest. Only after we are comfortable on the trail and know where it is in case we got lost, only then are we sent deep into the woods to examine the trees.

Other law school materials should follow this model.

Layman.
Context.
Lawyer.

This is an excellent book, and the systems approach taken by Lopucki and Warren is an extremely effective way to tackle a difficult subject.

"This financial crisis started one mortgage at a time," Dr. Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard Law School professor who chairs the Congressional oversight panel on government bailout spending, told The New York Times on June 18, 2009. Yes, and despite the enormity of the task facing us, there is a good place to start, to reduce systemic risk, where we can gain swift traction, and that is with microdecisions - the innumerable individual economic decisions financial professionals and consumers make every day on a global basis. To be clear, I'm not talking about trivial mini-decisions. Microdecisions are the fundamental building blocks of the economic system on all levels.

Beneath the fearsome complexity that can obscure the working of markets, the value of all financial relationships is still defined by the quality of the underwriting - defining underwriting in the broadest possible sense. The old rules still rule: Know your borrower. Know your lender. It's a simple concept, but the market environment in recent decades has made it harder and harder to execute. We must repair the markets in a way that enables 360-degree underwriting based on clear, transparent, trustworthy data and relationships.

Laurent Pacalin
Chief Marketing Officer at FICO

the book was in great condition just like the seller had described and it was shipped promptly. Very happy with the purchase.