New Ranch: Perfecting a Security Interest

The New Ranch lesson is the successor to the Ranch lesson. As with the Ranch, the New Ranch lesson leads students through the steps necessary to perfecting a security interest under Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) in a multi-state contact situation. The exercise also assists students to understand many other provisions of Article 9, including those dealing with classification of collateral and those governing the place of filing within a particular state.

The New Ranch differs from the Ranch in that it deals with a completely revised version of Article 9, referred to in the lesson as "new Article 9." New Article 9 will be effective in most states on July 1, 2001. However, understanding new Article 9 requires understanding existing Article 9. Moreover, there will be some difficult transition issues the resolution of which will require understanding both existing and new Article 9. For these reasons, the New Ranch lesson explores the application of both existing and new Article 9 to the questions posed in the lesson.

As with the Ranch, the New Ranch is built around a basic fact situation that poses a problem for students to solve. Students are required to identify and explain the steps that must be taken to perfect a security interest in collateral located in one state, when the secured party or debtor are located in different states. Because students are pressed for reasons for as well as answers to questions posed, they learn not only what must be done but why. Various "branches" of the exercise lead students through "mini tutorials" on such sometimes difficult tasks as properly characterizing collateral for purposes of deciding what steps are required to perfect security interests in the collateral. By changing the facts along the way, the exercise seeks to test the degree to which students actually understand the conclusions they have reached. Because the exercise is set in the context of advising a client (actually a senior associate or partner), it provides a sense of "real world" activity that is often absent from the abstract learning experiences encountered in the classroom. The UCC sections needed to give the advice sought are provided in the exercise.