Biography

Nancy Rapoport's specialties are bankruptcy ethics, ethics in governance, higher education governance, law firm behavior, and the depiction of lawyers in popular culture. Among her published works are Corporate Scandals and Their Implications 3d (Nancy B. Rapoport and Jeffrey D. Van Niel, eds.; West Academic, 2018), which addresses the question of why we never seem to learn from prior corporate scandals, and Ethical Lawyering: A Guide for the Well-Intentioned (Bernard A. Burk, Veronica J. Finkelstein, and Nancy B. Rapoport; Aspen Publishers, 2021; second edition forthcoming, 2024).

Rapoport is admitted to the bars of the states of California, Ohio, Nebraska, Texas, and Nevada and of the United States Supreme Court. She has served as the fee examiner or as chair of the fee review committee in such large bankruptcy cases as Zetta Jet, Toys R Us, Caesars, Station Casinos, Pilgrim's Pride, and Mirant.

In 2001, she was elected to membership in the American Law Institute. She is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy. She has served as the dean of faculty of the American Board of Certification, the entity that develops, grades, and certifies lawyers for specialties in business bankruptcy, consumer bankruptcy, and creditors’ rights. In 2017, she received the Commercial Law League of America's Lawrence P. King Award for Excellence in Bankruptcy.

Rapoport has also appeared in the Academy Award-nominated movie, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (Magnolia Pictures, 2005) as herself. In 2009, the Association of Media and Entertainment Council presented Rapoport with the Public Service Counsel Award at the 4th Annual Counsel of the Year Awards.

In her spare time, she competes, pro-am, in American Rhythm and American Smooth ballroom dancing. In 2014, she won the national U.S. Open Pro/Am Rising Star American Smooth Competition B Division, and in 2017, she came in 2^nd in the “C” Open to the World Pro/Am American Style 9-Dance Championship.