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Learning bankruptcy law for freelance and solo work
Many Posse List members who want to go solo or freelance have asked us about bankruptcy practice. There are a good many of you who have worked on some of the major bankruptcy document reviews in the past few years (Federal-Mogul, United Airlines, Calpine, Enron, tec.) and will be well-prepared for the bankruptcy document reviews rolling out. Many of you have acquired a good working knowledge of Chapter 11 bankruptcy procedures.
But for the many of you who asked about doing solo/freelance consumer bankruptcy work you need to very well-grounded. As a recent Texas Lawyer article stated “if the practice of law is full of potholes, then the practice of bankruptcy is full of punji pits”. The article has some good warnings. The intricacies of bankruptcy law are mind-numbing (two us on The Posse List staff are ex-bankruptcy attorneys) and we agree: miss one of the legion of deadlines, and the client loses valuable rights. File a petition without the debtor going through the required pre-petition credit counseling, and the judge will dismiss the case. Fail to timely object to a debtor’s Chapter 13 plan that does not provide adequately for the treatment of a vehicle loan under 11 U.S.C. §1325(a)(9), and the creditor may lose thousands of dollars that otherwise would have been paid in the plan. Etc., etc.
The U.S. Bankruptcy Code is not user friendly, and it does not lend itself to figuring out its intricacies alone. Even with help from experienced practitioners and diligent self-study, learning to practice bankruptcy law can be an intellectually humbling experience.
We do not suggest you take a series of one CLE after another. We strongly suggest you start with an excellent course on consumer bankruptcy at Sole Practice University which is taught by Jay Fleischman (click here). He is very popular teacher at SPU and we have found that many students have enrolled at SPU specifically for his course. What’s good about SPU is the collateral benefits of all the other courses related to creating and marketing your practice plus the great community that’s going on, too. But check out the site yourself and do the numbers. At less than $50 per month its value is unsurpassed. You can find sign-up information by clicking here.
And for some very good background material (both consumer and bankruptcy law for contract attorneys, freelancers, etc.) try these websites and blogs. We’ll add to the list as we find more:
Federal Courts Offer Training on Bankruptcy Basics