M. P. RAM MOHAN, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad
Email: mprmohan@gmail.com
MUSKAAN WADHWA, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad

Insolvency and bankruptcy have always attracted a measure of stigma. The negative attitude towards insolvency emerged due to the historically harsh treatment of bankrupts and the perception of bankruptcy as a breach of a sacred relationship between the debtor and creditor. Majority of the existing legal scholarship studying the bankruptcy stigma focuses on personal insolvencies, while its influence on corporate insolvencies has largely been neglected. This paper attempts to fill this gap by examining the impact and manifestations of stigma in the context of corporate insolvency. The paper does so by contrasting the corporate insolvency schemes of the United States and the United Kingdom. It argues that while both jurisdictions prioritise the rehabilitation of corporate debtors, there is a divergence in the methodologies across the Atlantic due to the varied historical, cultural, and economic attitudes towards business failures. With this background, the paper explores bankruptcy stigma in the Indian context and shows how certain provisions of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 seem to reinforce and perpetuate the stigma against incumbent management and promoters of corporate debtors. The paper argues that there is a need to ameliorate the stigma associated with corporate insolvency for the successful rescue and rehabilitation of distressed corporations and for promoting entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic growth in the country.

JOAN MACLEOD HEMINWAY, University of Tennessee College of Law
Email: jheminwa@tennessee.edu

We do not always acknowledge this in legal education, but our students are learning to be leaders, because lawyers are leaders. That is as true of transactional business lawyers as it is of litigators, lawyers who hold political or regulatory appointments, lawyers engaged with compliance, and lawyers in general advisory practices. Yet, most law schools do little, if anything, to teach law students about leadership, or allow them to explore the contours and practices of lawyer leadership.

This edited transcript explains the importance of teaching leadership skills, traits, and processes to transactional business law students and offers insights on how instructors in a law school setting might engage in that kind of teaching as part of what they do. The transcript memorializes in written form a "Try This" session held at "Emerging from the Crisis: The Future of Transactional Law and Skills Education," the 7th biennial Conference on the Teaching of Transactional Law and Skills (hosted virtually by Emory Law in the spring of 2021). The session included interactions with the audience, reproduced in the transcript, that also offer important observations and information.