By John Drennan, Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz PC ( December 5, 2016, 12:24 PM EST) -- Bankruptcy law and privacy law may appear to be wholly separate areas of the law, but they overlap more than one might anticipate. Balancing individual rights and interests to achieve a social good is at the heart of both fields. In the privacy arena, privacy interests are pitted against other key social goals, such as national security, research and innovation. Bankruptcy involves similar trade-offs between interests and equities: for example, should creditors be compelled to take a haircut in order to preserve a viable but insolvent going concern or to avoid loss of jobs and harm to communities? Contract rights of all kinds may be altered in bankruptcy to achieve bankruptcy goals; a debtor can cure a breach and pay a fraction of the damages that it inflicted on others, so that the debtor might reorganize and continue. The underlying bankruptcy principle is that if someone can be made better off while leaving everyone else no worse off economically, then this result is socially desirable....