Secured Transactions for Non-Lawyers

This course surveys the law applicable to secured transactions in personal property. This body of law includes primarily Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code (“UCC”), the Federal Bankruptcy Code, and miscellaneous state laws.   The main goal of the course is to acquaint students with the fundamentals of Article 9 of the UCC.  The major subjects that will be explored in this course include: the scope of Article 9, the creation of security interests (attachment), the perfection of security interests, the priority of security interests, default and the foreclosure process, and the treatment of security interests in bankruptcy.  To help students acquire a “systems” view of secured credit, towards the end of the course we will briefly discuss security interests that are not governed by Article 9, such as mortgages.