Prof Sarah Paterson

This course is available on the LLM (extended part-time), LLM (full-time), MSc in Law and Finance and University of Pennsylvania Law School LLM Visiting Students. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process. For information on controlled access courses, including eligibility, application processes, deadlines, and departmental contact details, please refer to the Controlled Access Courses webpage.

How to apply: Priority will be given initially to LLM, MSc Regulation and MSc Law and Finance students on a first-come-first-served allocation.

Spaces permitting, requests from all other students will be processed on the same first-come-first-served allocation from 10am on Thursday 1 October 2026

By submitting an application, students are confirming that they meet any pre-requisites specified. Providing an additional written statement will not aid a student's chances of being accepted onto a course, and statements are not read.

Deadline for application: Not applicable

For queries contact: Law.llm@lse.ac.uk

This course has a limited number of places and demand is typically high. This may mean that you’re not able to get a place on this course.

This course focuses on the restructuring of financially distressed companies. We use Chapter 11 in the US as our jumping off point, before moving on to analyse the UK approach to moratoriums, small and medium sized enterprise restructuring and large company restructuring in a comparative frame with US Chapter 11. We then consider the European Restructuring Directive, and we finish by setting everything we have studied against academic theories of the role of law in promoting rescue.  The ambition is that by the end of the course students will have an analytical framework that they can use to analyse and evaluate any restructuring regime.

20 hours of seminars in the Winter Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

This course will have two hours of teaching content each week in Winter Term. There will be a Reading Week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

One 1,500 word essay.

A full Reading List will be distributed during the course. For introductory purposes, students are referred to Chapter 3 (Out-of Court vs Court-Supervised Restructurings) in Rodrigo Olivares-Caminal, Alan Kornberg, Sarah Paterson, Dalvinder Singh and Eric McLaughlin, Debt Restructuring (3rd ed, OUP 2022) which is available online through the LSE library.

Exam (100%), duration: 150 Minutes in the Spring exam period.