Dalié Jiménez

Professor of Law
Director, Student Loan Law Initiative
Dalié Jiménez

Expertise:

Bankruptcy and debtor-creditor law, consumer law, credit and debt collection markets, credit reporting, student loans, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, access to civil justice, randomized control trials in law

Background:

Professor Jiménez’s scholarly work focuses on contracts, bankruptcy and consumer financial distress, the regulation of financial products and its intersection with consumer protection, and access to justice. Professor Jiménez uses qualitative and quantitative empirical methods to explore the questions of how individuals cope with financial distress, how and whether our legal framework and institutions help or hinder individuals extricate themselves from this distress, and the role of the legal profession in helping individuals with this and other civil legal problems.

Professor Jiménez is one of a handful of legal academics currently using experimental techniques—randomized control trials—to explore some of these questions. She currently has three such randomized trial experiments in the works at various stages. Along with collaborators, she has raised over $1.4 million in direct and indirect costs for these projects. One of these projects inspired a legal nonprofit startup in New York.

Professor Jiménez spent a year as part of the founding staff of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau where she worked on debt collection, debt relief, credit reporting, and student loan issues. Prior to her academic career, she clerked for the Honorable Juan R. Torruella of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, was a litigation associate at Ropes & Gray, L.L.P. in Boston, and worked on consumer protection issues at the Massachusetts State Senate.

(Log in to view full course descriptions in the UCI Law Course Catalog)

  • May 16-17, 2025
    Presenter on paper, “Do Documents Protect Defendants? Evaluating the Effects of California’s Fair Debt Buying Practices Act,” American Law & Economics Association Annual Meeting
  • November 8, 2025
    Presenter on paper, “Do Documents Protect Defendants? Evaluating the Effects of California’s Fair Debt Buying Practices Act,” Conference on Empirical Legal Studies