Professor Jason Kilborn, from The John Marshall Law School in Chicago, has been appointed as an Advisory Commissioner to the new Seoul Bankruptcy Court in South Korea. He is the first foreigner to be appointed to the court.
The appointment will run for a three-year term until 2021. Kilborn’s responsibilities will require him to provide advice to the court on developments around the world and about how the court can stay on the cutting edge of worldwide best practices.
Kilborn has traveled to Seoul twice in recent months and presented a special lecture to the judges on developments in European personal bankruptcy and U.S. and Canadian financial-management training. He was also invited to present on two panels at the court’s annual conference.
Kilborn’s particular expertise in insolvency proceedings has been in high demand lately. In the last few months, he has been invited to present in Varna, Bulgaria; Beijing, China; and Washington, D.C.
Over the past decade, Kilborn has focused his academic research on comparing bankruptcy and insolvency in the U.S. to Europe and other areas. He has written numerous articles and a book on comparative bankruptcy, and co-authored a book on international cooperation in cross-border business bankruptcy. He is also a national reporter and co-editor of a series of detailed comparative analyses of business reorganization practices around the world.
Kilborn has chaired a drafting group for a World Bank project on the treatment of insolvency of natural persons and has advised several national governments on developing personal insolvency laws. He has been appointed to three, two-year terms as the Van der Grinten Chair in International and Comparative Insolvency Law at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, and a one-semester term as the Robert M. Zinman Scholar in Residence at the American Bankruptcy Institute. In 2016, Kilborn was invited to join the prestigious International Insolvency Institute.
Kilborn joined the John Marshall faculty in 2007. He teaches Secured Transactions, Bankruptcy, Corporations, Civil Procedure II, and Payment Systems. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Northern Iowa and his J.D., Order of the Coif, from the University of Michigan Law School. Before teaching, Kilborn was a bankruptcy associate with Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton in New York, and Wilmer Cutler & Pickering in Washington, D.C.
