A.S. Pratt

Pratt’s Commercial Lending Library: Internet Edition
(research.sheshunoff.com)

If you negotiate, document, or make commercial loans or letters of credit, you already know how time-consuming it is to research legal questions relating to UCC Articles 5 and 9, federal banking laws, regulations, agency documents, and other sources of law. No area of commercial law is more heavily litigated—and one mistake could result in high losses or regulatory fines.

Pratt’s Commercial Lending Library: Internet Edition can help you avoid such costly mistakes, while saving you time and improving your researching. The Library gives you analysis from the experts in commercial lending, along with thousands of primary source documents, including the UCC, laws, regulations, and agency documents and issuances. Our high-speed search platform saves you time and lets you focus your searching on selected topics or the complete database.

The Library includes these industry standards:

• The Law of Secured Transactions under the Uniform Commercial Code, by Barkley Clark and Barbara Clark. This treatise has long been the most-cited on secured lending and UCC Article 9. It presents clearly written commentary on the legal problems that can plague secured transactions, such as scope of coverage, perfection, and priority rules. The book includes drafting tips, model financing statement descriptions, and suggested clauses for security agreements,all backed by references to controlling authorities so you can be confident that your agreements will hold up in court. In addition, you get step-by-step guidance on how to maximize recovery if a debtor defaults or files for bankruptcy, and much more.
• Clarks' Secured Transactions Monthly, by Barkley Clark and Barbara Clark. This newsletter has served as a guidepost for evolving thinking on secured lending issues. It will keep you informed of the latest Article 9 developments and recent court cases and their impact on the industry.
• Structuring and Drafting Commercial Loan Agreements, by Sandra Stern. The leading reference used by hundreds of attorneys, borrowers, and lenders for the optimal negotiation and structuring of commercial loans. This treatise discusses the current laws, regulations, and policy statements in the context in which they arise during these transactions, as well as the practical aspects of electronic commerce, letters of credit, and selling a participation or loan. A special section gives step-by-step guidance on perfection and priority issues.
• Commercial Law: A Banker's Handbook, by Pamela Gotcher. This respected guidance manual covers all the legal issues relating to commercial banking, from making and collecting loans to taking deposits. It even integrates those consumer requirements that also relate to the commercial arena, such as Truth in Savings and Reg CC. The analysis includes guidance on implementation, along with warning signs for complex potential problems in the lending process, and tips on how to avoid common problems encountered by other banks.
• The Law of Letters of Credit: Commercial and Standby Credits, by John Dolan. The most used court-cited treatise on letters of credit covers every reported English-language case on this complex area of commercial law. Written by one of the draftsmen of UCC Revised Article 5 in an easy-to-follow, transactional form, it clearly explains the mechanisms that underlie letter of credit activity. This treatise guides you through the entire life cycle of a credit—including such essential steps as establishing, amending, and terminating the credit transfers and assignments. It examines the unique features of commercial and standby credits and all the legal issues connected with using them.
• Letters of Credit Web Report, by John Dolan, J. Benjamin Dolan, and Lorraine Knapp. Legal analysis of letters of credit cases (archived issues through August 2002). This monthly publication focused on drafting, litigating, or using letters of credit to keep up with evolving regulations and case law. Subsequent cases and issues are analyzed and published as part of The Law of Letters of Credit.

All of the above materials are linked to the following primary sources, which are also indexed and searchable on their own:

• Uniform Commercial Code (including the Official Commentary). Full text includes Revised Articles 5 and 9, among others.
• United States Code (USC)—selected titles and sections relating to banking and commercial lending transactions
• Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) —selected titles and sections relating to banking and commercial lending transactions
• Federal Register—Banking Agency Extract. Updated daily with issuances from banking agencies and others with relevance to commercial lending.
• Uniform Customs and Practice for Documentary Credits (UCP) 400 and 500. Included as appendixes to The Law of Letters of Credit.
• Agency Documents, Manuals, and Issuances. Statements, documents, and publications from the FDIC, FFIEC, Federal Reserve Board, OCC, OTS, HUD, DOL, and SEC and other federal regulators relating to commercial lending.
• State Laws and Regulations. Text of, or access to, banking-related laws and regulations from all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands.

Subscribers may also select one or more of the following e-mail alert services:

• Pratt’s Commercial Law and Regulatory Alert (daily Federal Register updates)
• Clarks’ Secured Lending Alert (includes updates from Clarks’ Secured Lending Web Report)
• Pratt’s Commercial Lending Library Monthly Alert (includes updates from expert analysis, UCC, USC, CFR, Agency Documents, and State Laws and Regulations).

Save Time and Improve Your Research Efficiency

Pratt’s Commercial Lending Library: Internet Edition is a fully searchable collection of thousands of documents dealing with commercial lending law, bringing together the laws and regulations themselves, the decisions, rulings and statements from the regulators, and the expert analysis that only A. S. Pratt can provide.

The search functionality is extremely fast and powerful. You may conduct simple or advanced searches across all documents, or across any specified combination of documents. Searches will allow for selected words, all of the terms, or the exact phrases provided.

The Library also includes updates to the laws, regulations, agency documents, and expert analysis. Daily updates are posted to the Federal Register—Banking Agency Extract section, and a summary of these updates is sent by e-mail to subscribers each day. Each month, subscribers will receive an e-mail summarizing changes to expert analysis, laws, regulations, agency documents, and another e-mail with a summary of the latest issue of Clarks’ Secured Lending Web Report. The "New on This Web Site" section summarizes each month’s major changes in analytical and documentary content.

FEATURES:

• Fully searchable database with a fast and accurate search engine
• A fast and thorough search engine that allows for both broad and narrow searches
• Legal and regulatory analysis and guidance by the foremost experts in the field
• All laws and regulations related to commercial lending
• The Uniform Commercial Code (with the Official Commentary)
• All federal regulatory agency documents and issuances related to commercial lending
• Hypertext linking throughout the documents
• Optional e-mail alert services to notify you of changes to the content
• Page modifications for custom searches

Sign up here for a free demo and more information!

About the Authors

Barkley Clark is well known as a national authority on commercial and financial services law. He is a partner in the law firm of Stinson Morrison Hecker LLP. He advises financial institutions and businesses around the country on a variety of UCC and federal banking law issues, including payment systems, secured transactions, and sales. He is listed in Best Lawyers in America. He is a graduate of Amherst College and Harvard Law School. During a teaching career spanning 35 years, he has taught commercial law at the University of Kansas School of Law, Georgetown Law Center, George Washington University, and the University of Virginia School of Law. His publications are relied on by practicing attorneys and bankers throughout the financial services industry and are frequently cited by federal and state courts. He has served as a special adviser to the Federal Reserve Board, the Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, and state legislatures around the country. He has also served as a director of a national bank. He has co-authored (with Barbara Clark) four major treatises in the banking law area—The Law of Bank Deposits, Collections and Credit Cards, The Law of Secured Transactions under the Uniform Commercial Code, and Clarks’ Guide to Electronic Check Collection. He co-edits (with Barbara Clark) two newsletters—Clarks’ Bank Deposits and Payments Monthly and Clarks’ Secured Transactions Monthly.

Barbara Clark is a former federal prosecutor and commercial litigator with over 25 years’ experience. She is a partner in the Commercial Law Institute, Greenwood, Virginia. Ms. Clark is a graduate of Hamilton College and the University of Maryland School of Law. She has been a partner in private practice specializing in commercial litigation and has represented financial institutions before federal and state regulators. One of Ms. Clark’s areas of special interest is financial fraud and risk management. She is a co-author (with Barkley Clark) of The Law of Bank Deposits, Collections and Credit Cards, The Law of Secured Transactions Under the UCC, and Clarks’ Guide to Electronic Check Collection. Ms. Clark has also co-authored (with Barkley Clark and Mark Hargrave) Truth in Savings: Legal Analysis and Compliance Strategies, and is a co-editor (with Mr. Clark) of two monthly newsletters—one on secured transactions and the other on bank deposits and payments.

John Dolan is Distinguished Professor of Law at Wayne State University Law School in Detroit. He has been a visiting professor of law at the University of Michigan, the University of California (Hastings College of the Law), twice at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, at Ave Maria School of Law, and at the University of Maastricht. He was also a visiting scholar at University College Dublin.

From 1988 to 1991, Professor Dolan chaired the American Bar Association Letter of Credit Subcommittee and was a full member initially and, later, an ex officio member of the Task Force that studied letters of credit for the ABA from 1987 to 1989. He was an ABA adviser to the Drafting Committee of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws that prepared the 1995 version of Article 5. From 1988 to 1995, he served as a member of the Study Group on Trade Documentation of the U.S. State Department Advisory Committee on Private International Trade Law. He is a member of the American Law Institute and from 1990 to 1995 was adviser to the Restatement of Suretyship project.

Professor Dolan has co-authored several textbooks and law journal articles. He was a member of the board of editors and an officer of the University of Illinois Law Forum (now University of Illinois Law Review). He also served on the board of editors of Letter of Credit Update from 1985 to 1987, is a member of the editorial board of the Banking Law Journal , and is a contributing editor to the Banking & Finance Law Review (Osgoode Hall Law School, Toronto).

Professor Dolan graduated from the University of Illinois College of Law in 1965, clerked for the United States District Judge in the Eastern District of Illinois upon graduation, and then practiced law full time for ten years before he entered law teaching.

Pamela S. Gotcher, Esq., author of Commercial Law: A Banker’s Handbook, is an attorney for Bank One Corporation. In this capacity, she provides legal advice and counsel to Bank One International Corporation, as well as the commercial lending areas for Bank One. During her many years in banking law, her expertise has covered a wide variety of banking legal matters.

Ms. Gotcher is a noted commentator on practical problems in commercial banking law. She has written extensively on dealing with problem loans and bankruptcy, and is the current author of Pratt’s Commercial Lending Question & Answer Book. She is also a regular contributor to Sheshunoff’s High Performance Banking newsletter. Ms. Gotcher is a member of the American, Federal, Texas, Oklahoma, Dallas, and Tulsa Bar Associations; the Texas-Mexico Bar Association; Tulsa Banking Lawyers Group; and the Tulsa Women Lawyers Association.

Sandra S. Stern, Esq., author of Structuring and Drafting Commercial Loan Agreements, is one of the nation’s most respected and accomplished authorities on secured lending law. A partner in Nordquist & Stern PLLC, a New York firm specializing in commercial law, Ms. Stern has been at the forefront of development of modern commercial lending law for over two decades. Prior to entering private practice, Ms. Stern served as General Counsel at Banco Santander and as Deputy General Counsel at Republic National Bank of New York.

Ms. Stern has been active in developing the law that she practices, serving prominently on the drafting committee for Revised Article 9 of the UCC (Secured Transactions), as well as on the drafting committees for the revisions to Articles 5 (Letters of Credit) and 7 (Documents of Title). Ms. Stern formerly chaired the Business Law Section of the New York State Bar Association.

You might also be interested in:

• The Banking Law Journal
• The Law of Lender Liability
• Banking and Lending Institution Forms with Commentary and Checklists