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

The Washington Post
December 2, 2019
Re: Jonathan Handel

Jonathan Handel was quoted on Pete Davidson's nondisclosure agreement for attending his comedy shows, barring the audience from speaking about his shows. Handel mentioned that successfully suing a random fan for $1 million would be nearly impossible. “The optics of going to court and suing one of your fans is really pretty ugly,” Handel said. “It would be foolish to do that.”

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

Scott Altman
October, 2019

"Are Boycotts, Shunning, and Shaming Corrupt?” Legal Theory Workshop, University of Virginia Law School, Charlottesville, VA.

Gregory Keating
October, 2019

Gregory Keating’s paper, “Is Tort Law ‘Private’?” was reviewed by Ellen Bublick as a significant work of scholarship relating to Tort Law in JOTWELL: The Journal of Things We Like (Lots), on October 15, 2019.

Dan Simon
October, 2019

“Confessions True and False,” Korean Society for Criminal Law, Yonsei University Law School, Seoul, South Korea.