Faculty

Michelle Harner joined the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law faculty in the fall of 2009. She teaches courses in Bankruptcy and Creditors’ Rights, Business Associations, Business Planning and Professional Responsibility. Prior to joining UM Carey Law, Professor Harner served as an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Nebraska College of Law and was voted “Professor of the Year” by the upperclass students during the 2006-07 and 2008-09 academic years.

Professor Harner is widely published and lectures frequently on various topics involving corporate governance, financially distressed entities and related legal issues. Her most recent publications appear or are forthcoming in the Vanderbilt Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Washington University Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, Fordham Law Review (reprinted in Corporate Practice Commentator), Arizona Law Review, Maryland Law Review, Seton Hall Law Review, and Seattle University Law Review. She also has published or will be publishing articles in specialty law reviews at the Moritz College of Law (The Ohio State University), Rutgers School of Law, University of Miami School of Law and University of Maryland School of Law. Several courts have cited her scholarship, including the United States Courts of Appeal for the First, Third and Ninth Circuits and the United States District Court for the District of Nevada. Professor Harner’s current research interests include shareholder and creditor activism and its impact on corporate value; legislative responses to serial business failures and related implications for discrete industries; and the ethical implications of insolvency for directors, officers and other fiduciaries.

Professor Harner currently is serving as the Reporter to the ABI Commission to Study the Reform of Chapter 11.  In addition, in March 2009 and April 2012, Professor Harner received research grants from the American Bankruptcy Institute Endowment Fund to study the role of creditors’ committees in chapter 11 business bankruptcies and potential reforms to chapter 11, respectively.

Professor Harner previously was in private practice in the business restructuring, insolvency, bankruptcy and related transactional fields, most recently as a partner at the Chicago office of the international law firm Jones Day. Before joining that firm in 1996, Professor Harner served as law clerk to Judge William T. Bodoh of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Ohio. Professor Harner attended the Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University (J.D. 1995), where she served as Executive Editor of the Ohio State Law Journal and also was a member of the Order of the Coif. She earned her undergraduate degree at Boston College (B.A. 1992, English and Political Science), and she is admitted to practice law in Illinois and Ohio.

Professor Harner is a member of a number of professional organizations, including the American Law Institute, American Bankruptcy Institute, the American Bar Association and the International Association of Restructuring, Insolvency & Bankruptcy Professionals.