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.

Learn more about Professor Jiménez and her work in her interview with Harvard Law School's Center on the Legal Profession.

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

  • Dalié Jiménez, Missing Strugglers: Debt’s Reach, Bankruptcy’s Limits, and a Proxy for Who’s Left Out, 20 Brooklyn J. Corp. Fin. & Com. L. (forthcoming 2025). [SSRN link]
  • Claire Johnson Raba and Dalié Jiménez, Pay to Plead: Finding Unfairness and Abusive Practices in California Debt Collection Cases, 44 Rev. Banking & Fin. L. 113 (2025). [SSRN link]
  • Belisa Pang, Dalié Jiménez & Matthew A. Bruckner, Full Discharge Ahead? An Empirical Look at the New Student Loan Discharge Process in Bankruptcy, 41 Emory Bankr. Devs. J. 259 (2025).  [SSRN link]
  • Congressional Testimony, US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs, Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection. Hearing: “Back to School: Shedding Light on Risks and Harm in the Private Student Lending and Servicing Market” (Sept. 17, 2024) [SSRN link]
  • Dalié Jiménez, Decreasing Supply to the Assembly Line of Debt Collection Litigation, 135 Harv. L. Rev. F. 374 (2022). [SSRN link]
  • Pamela Foohey, Dalié Jiménez, and Christopher K. Odinet, Steering Loan Modifications Post-Pandemic, 85 L. & Contemp. Probs. 201 (2022). [SSRN link]
  • October 30, 2025
    Presenter, "How Better Policies in Consumer Debt Litigation and in Other Areas of Law are Essential to Access to Justice, Identifiable, and Within Reach" at National Legal Aid & Defender Association (NLADA) Annual Conference (Washington, DC, Oct. 30, 2025).
  • May 23, 2025
    “Financial Distress Research Project: Preliminary Findings,” Law & Society (Chicago, IL, May 23, 2025). 
  • 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
  • April 3, 2025
    “Unsatisfied Judgments,” State Courts Conference at University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA, April 3, 2025).
  • 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