University of Pennsylvania Finding Aids

Kenneth N. Klee spent his career analyzing bankruptcy law and advocating for pro-debtor reforms to the Bankruptcy Code. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1974 and joined to the California bar in 1975. He began his career as Associate Counsel for the Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, a subunit of the House of Representatives' Committee on the Judiciary, where he advised Congress and helped draft legislation related to bankruptcy reform in the 1970s. He was also a consultant to the House Judiciary Committee from 1977 to 1982 and the Department of Justice from 1983 to 1985. Klee was a member of the National Bankruptcy Conference, an association of scholars and practitioners committed to the study of bankruptcy legislation and reform, where he was chair of the Committee on Legislation from 1992 to 1999. He worked at Stutman, Treister and Glatt and was a founding partner of Klee, Tuchin, Bogdanoff, and Stern, LLP. The collection, 1969-1999, includes papers relating to Klee's work from 1969 to 1995 as a legal assistant to the Committee on the Judiciary, including drafts of bills, handwritten notes, markup copies of legislation, reports, and correspondence; materials related to Klee's legislative activities from 1997 to 1999 as a member of the National Bankruptcy Conference; lectures, presentations, and related material created by Klee for continuing education courses, seminars, and other programs; course materials related to Klee's professorships at UCLA and USC from 1979 to 1984; photocopies and other reference material; and related material.

As a teacher, scholar, lawyer, and consultant, Lawrence P. King (1929-2001) played an important role in the reform of bankruptcy law from the 1960s to his death in 2001. King taught commercial and bankruptcy law at New York University Law School. He served on a number of congressional commissions formed to analyze and reform bankruptcy law, including the Advisory Committee on Bankruptcy Rules of the Judicial Conference of the United States. He gave speeches and participated in panels regarding bankruptcy legislation for a number of seminars and educational programs. He was an active member of the National Bankruptcy Conference, an organization of lawyers, judges, and professors dedicated to bankruptcy reform. He had leadership roles in National Bankruptcy Conference committees, including the Committee on Legislation, where he was Chairman. He is well known as Editor of Collier on Bankruptcy, a reference series that became the leading treatise on bankruptcy law during King's 40-year tenure. The collection,1952-2001, includes personal and professional correspondence; reports, correspondence, and memoranda relating to King's participation in the Advisory Committee on Bankruptcy Rules; congressional hearings and testimony by King and his colleagues; meeting minutes, correspondence, and committee materials from the National Bankruptcy Conference, of which King was an active member; papers relating to the New York University Advanced Workshop on Bankruptcy and Business Reorganization, which King created and taught; seminar materials from the Federal Judicial Center, the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges, the Association of American Law Schools, and other organizations; articles written by King; teaching materials; subject files on a range of topics, including personal bankruptcy, bankruptcy reform, the Bankruptcy Code, consumer legislation, and the Marathon Pipeline bankruptcy court case; and other papers used by King in the course of his scholarship.