Janis Penton

Janis Penton recently retired after 40 years representing financial institutions as a partner in private law firms and in-house, most recently as associate general counsel at MUFG Union Bank. Penton is an expert on bank trust and securities activities, a highly regarded public finance professional and recognized for her knowledge of letters of credit.

Penton chairs the American Bar Association’s Law School Teaching Subcommittee and is the programming director of the Committee on Trust Indentures and Indenture Trustees. She was the secretary of the Article 5 Task Force, sponsored by the American Bar Association and the International Financial Services Association, that provided the basis for revision of letter of credit law; was a drafter of the California legislative analysis for UCC Article 5 adoption; and was a member of the drafting committee for the International Standby Practices (ISP 98).

Penton is a past chair of the American Bar Association’s Trust & Investment Services Subcommittee; Letters of Credit Subcommittee; and Working Group on International Letters of Credit and Bank Guarantees. She is a fellow of the American College of Commercial Finance Lawyers and a member of the editorial advisory board of Documentary Credit World. She serves on the advisory council of the Center for Transnational Law and Business at the USC Gould School of Law.

Penton received her BA from UCLA and her MBA and JD degrees from USC, where she was a member of the Southern California Law Review and Order of the Coif. Following law school, she clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. 

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

San Francisco Chronicle
April 14, 2021
Re: Jean Lantz Reisz

Jean Reisz was interviewed about the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco's rejection of an earlier U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals decision that denied asylum to Salvadoran sisters who were harassed by a gang. “Their journey to asylum has been difficult and longer than it should have been,” she said. The judge and the board “ignored the evidence and denied lifesaving relief to the twins based on unlawful conclusions” that the court has now overturned. The article also appeared in Microsoft News.

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

Michael Simkovic
February, 2021

"Income Taxes and Work Hours," University of Virginia Law and Economics Workshop, University of Virginia Law School, Charlottesville, VA.

Dorothy S. Lund
February, 2021

“The Corporate Governance Machine” (with Elizabeth Pollman), 122 Columbia Law Review (forthcoming 2022)

Michael Simkovic
February, 2021

“Income Taxes & Work Hours,” Florida Tax Review.