A window on the world of big-case bankruptcy.

Video: Why you should be using the BRD, and
why your firm should become a BRD sponsor.

What is the BRD?

The UCLA-LoPucki Bankruptcy Research Database (BRD) is a data collection, data linking, and data dissemination project of the UCLA School of Law. The BRD’s mission is to promote bankruptcy research by making bankruptcy data available to academic researchers throughout the world, free of charge.

The BRD contains data on all of the more than one-thousand large public companies that have filed bankruptcy cases since October 1, 1979. We consider a company "public" if it filed an Annual Report (form 10-K or form 10) with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a year ending not less than three years prior to the filing of the bankruptcy case. We consider a company “large” if that Annual Report reported assets worth $100 million or more, measured in 1980 dollars (about $287 million in current dollars). Coverage includes cases filed under Chapter 7 and Chapter 11, whether filed by the debtors or creditors. We update most of our data monthly.

The BRD Data.

The BRD consists of five sets of data:

1. The Cases table. The Cases table consists of about 200 fields of regression-ready data on each BRD case. We distribute the entire table in Microsoft Excel (xlsx) and Comma Separated Values (csv) format. A sample of the Cases table is posed here.
2. The WebBRD. The WebBRD consists of about 25 of the most widely used fields from the Cases table. WebBRD data can be accessed through several online tools. Run-a-Study enables users to design and run a study of any of about 20 variables. The study can be of all BRD cases or any subset of them. The Cases Spreadsheet is an interactive spreadsheet containing all of the WebBRD data. The Case Summaries show all of the data for a case on a single screen.
3. The BRD dockets. We have collected or constructed electronic dockets for more than 900 BRD cases, including all that are available on Pacer. The Pacer Docket Search is a program that searches the 2.5 million docket entries in our collection by several search methods, including word, document type, and case type.
4. The Professional Fees study data. This dataset includes all of the data compiled by Lynn M. LoPucki and Joseph W. Doherty as part of their study of professional fees in 102 BRD cases disposed of from 1998 through 2007.
5. BRD user data. We collect and post data on the research projects of BRD users and a list of publications based on BRD data.

How is the BRD funded?

Financial support for the BRD has come from the UCLA School of Law, grants from the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges Endowment, the American Bankruptcy Institute's Anthony H.N. Schnelling ABI Endowment Fund, the Turnaround Management Association’s Cornerstone Program, and private gifts.

If you or your organization is interested in supporting the BRD's mission to promote big case bankruptcy research, please contact us.