Bankruptcy

Choosing a Bankruptcy Lawyer Today

There is a whole lot out there on how to choose a bankruptcy lawyer. I won’t rehash it all. Much of it is common sense: get a feel for the attorney, learn about your options, and get some information on fees, track record, and experience. I want to focus on the last thing here: experience.
One of the side effects of the current economic environment is that, for lawyers, bankruptcy has become a pretty hot practice area. There is nothing wrong with that: Real estate law (conveyancing) was very popular a few years back when real estate was the hottest asset class on earth. The bottom line is that the downturn has produced a lot of new lawyers in the field of bankruptcy. Some are new to bankruptcy but have been practicing other types of law for years. It is possible, maybe even likely, that you’ll be fine with this type of lawyer, as I bet some recent converts are working very hard to come up to speed and plan to stay around when something new gets hot. However, there are some lawyers who are holding themselves are bankruptcy specialists when their knowledge of practice area is shallow at best. You might be fine if you ignore all of this. However, if I was looking a bankruptcy lawyer today, I would be looking for someone who had at least a couple years of bankruptcy experience, and ideally someone who had been practicing bankruptcy since the passage of the major bankruptcy amendments of 2005.

Full post as published by Bankruptcy Law Network on January 28, 2010 (boomark / email).