Webmail
School Directory
Debra Pogrund Stark
Professor
The John Marshall Law School
315 South Plymouth Court
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Phone: 312.360.2650
Email: 7stark@jmls.edu
Office: Room 929
Office Hours: Weds. 4-5:45 p.m. or by appointment
BA, summa cum laude, Brandeis University, Phi Beta Kappa
JD, cum laude, Northwestern University School of Law
Scholarship | SSRN Publications | Presentations
An expert on real estate law and predatory lending law, Professor Debra Pogrund Stark was awarded in June 2010 (with colleague Dr. Jessica Choplin) a $250,000 grant from the National Science Foundation's Law and Social Sciences Division to investigate how prospective homeowners read, assess and recall important information before agreeing to the terms of home loans. In their three year funded project they will run five experiments to test their theories on how unscrupulous mortgage lenders and mortgage brokers can take advantage of consumers' cognitive limitations to reduce the effectiveness of home loan disclosures and to test various intervention strategies, including mortgage counseling. Based upon the results of their experiments Professor Stark will propose legal reforms to better protect consumers. She currently serves on the State of Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation's Residential Mortgage Board, a group tasked with making recommendations to address the home loan crisis here in Illinois.
Professor Stark is a prolific writer authoring thirteen law review articles (several utilizing empirical data and inter-disciplinary work—one in the premier law and psychology journal of the American Psychological Association) on real estate and consumer protection matters, twelve bar and real estate business publication articles, and has authored, co-authored or served as general editor of five books and textbooks, including "Commercial Real Estate Transactions: A Project and Skills Oriented Approach" (2d ed. 2009 Lexis) which has been adopted at over thirty law schools since the first edition came out in 2001. Stark was an active member of the Real Property Section of the American Bar Association (chairing its Foreclosure and Related Remedies Committee and Vice-Chairing its Pro Bono Committee) and is currently active in the Real Estate Section of the Real Estate Section of the Association of American Law Schools (Executive Committee, Treasurer, and currently Secretary—slotted to be Chair of the Section in 2012).
After eight years in private practice with Katten Muchin, Professor Stark joined the faculty in 1994 and appreciates the opportunities this career shift allowed her to serve the community. While at JMLS she helped create John Marshall's LLM Program in Real Estate Law and co-founded with two students the John Marshall Law School Habitat for Humanity Chapter. As faculty supervisor of the JMLS HFH Chapter she has organized and worked on pro bono legal assistance to local affiliates with students. She has taught in the past Property and Family Law and currently focuses on Real Estate Transactions, Commercial Real Estate, Predatory Lending Law (as a guest lecturer), and Domestic Violence Law and Practicum (a course she developed for the law school in 2008 that includes a clinical component where students represent survivors of domestic violence to obtain an emergency order of protection and where students also work on reform ideas and outreach letters to effectuate improvements to the legal and community response to domestic violence).
Scholarship
A Psychological Investigation of Consumer Vulnerability to Fraud: Legal and Policy Implications (with Dr. Choplin and Ahmad), 35 Law & Psychology Review 61 (2011)
Consumer Protection Initiatives in the E.U. Mortgage Market: A Behavioral Economics Analysis and Proposal, 25 Temple International and Comparative Law Journal 1 (2011)
A Cognitive and Social Psychological Analysis of Disclosure Laws and Call for Mortgage Counseling To Prevent Predatory Lending (with Dr. Choplin), 16 Psychology, Public Policy & Law 85 (2010)
Commercial Real Estate Transactions: A Project and Skills Oriented Approach, Lexis Law (2d ed. 2010)
A License To Deceive: Enforcing Contractual Myths Despite Consumer Psychological Realities (with Dr. Choplin), 5 NYU Journal of Law & Business 617 (2009)
Does Fraud Pay? An Empirical Analysis of Attorney's Fees Provisions In Consumer Fraud Statues (with Dr. Choplin), 56 Cleveland State Law Review 483 (2008)
How Do You Solve A Problem Like In Kelo?, 40 John Marshall Law Review 609 (2007)
Presentations
Panelist: "Housing Issues Facing Survivors of Domestic Violence," The John Marshall Law School (August 26, 2011)
Panelist: "Domestic Violence in the United States: A Question and Answer Session," The John Marshall Law School (October 25, 2010)
Speaker: 7th Annual Atiner International Conference of Law, "A Psychological and Policy Critique of EU Member State Responses to the Green Paper on Mortgage Credit," Athens, Greece (July 20, 2010)
Speaker: Oxford Round Table, "Sacrificing Consumers on the Alter of 'Market Efficiency': The Need for Mandatory Mortgage Counseling Intervention," Pembroke College, Oxford University (March 24, 2009)
Speaker: "Protecting Victims of Domestic Violence: One Law School's Response," Masyrk University, Brno (March 24, 2009)
Speaker: "Protecting Victims of Domestic Violence: One Law School's Response," Charles University, Prague (March 17, 2009)
Panelist: Annual AALS Meeting, "Pedagogical Techniques to Incorporate GLBT Issues into the Family Law Course," San Diego, California (January 7, 2009)
Panelist: Emory Law School Transactional Skills Conference, "Incorporating Transactional Skills Into The First Year Curriculum: An Example Taken From Property Law" (May 31, 2008)
