Avoidance & Claims Litigation
The Conference’s work on preferences, fraudulent transfers, the trustee’s avoiding powers (§§ 544–550), and the allowance and priority of claims.
Where the Conference shapes the law on avoiding powers.
The Avoidance & Claims Litigation Committee examines how trustees and estates recover value — preferences, fraudulent transfers, and the statutory avoiding powers — and how creditor claims are allowed, subordinated, and prioritized. Its reports propose targeted amendments to the Bankruptcy Code and flag where the case law has drifted from what Congress intended.
Avoiding powers
Preferences, fraudulent transfers, and the trustee’s recovery tools under §§ 544–550.
Claims & priority
How creditor claims are allowed, subordinated, and ranked within the estate.
Code amendments
Targeted proposals where case law has drifted from Congress’s intent.
The full committee
Reports & positions on avoiding powers.
Weighing an avoidance provision?
Get the Conference’s non-partisan read — and a direct line for technical assistance on avoiding-powers questions.
Edwin E. Smith
Edwin E. Smith is a senior consultant at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, resident in the firm’s Boston and New York offices. His practice concentrates on commercial law, debt and structured financings, workouts, bankruptcies, and cross-border transactions — advising financial institutions on documentation and risk management in domestic and international insolvency matters.
He has served as counsel in a number of the era’s landmark bankruptcies — among them Refco, Lehman Brothers, Pacific Gas & Electric, the City of Detroit, and SunEdison — representing creditors, lenders, asset purchasers, and plan administrators.
He is treasurer and a board member of the National Bankruptcy Conference, a life member of the American Law Institute, and a Uniform Law Commissioner for Massachusetts, where he chaired the drafting committee for the 2022 UCC amendments addressing emerging technologies. He has taught secured transactions at Harvard, Northeastern, and Suffolk law schools and at Boston University’s Morin Center for Banking Law Studies.