Bankruptcy

Communicating with Your Arizona Bankruptcy Lawyer in Phoenix, Mesa, Glendale, Tempe, or Anyplace Else!

By Joseph McDaniel, Esq.

And with lawyers, the difficult is fixing the problem; sometimes, it's impossible to make clients as happy as we'd like, every hour of every day.

Recently my office got a phone call from an angry, distraught client who had hired us about three days before, and she said in the phone message that "You don't care enough to return my phone calls!"

Sadly, of course, her calls had been returned multiple times, but she didn't pick up, because she thought it was a creditor, and my office couldn't leave her a message, because her phone mailbox was full. So she didn't receive the return calls.

And that's sad, because it made her tense.

Turns out that the American Bar Association did a survey some years ago, and the results of that survey were that lawyers thought they were doing a magnificent job if they returned phone calls within 24 hours, and clients only if they returned the calls within 2 hours.

I get that. Doesn't mean I can fix it, but I get it.

But this is a depression. That means all serious bankruptcy lawyers are functioning as lifeguards at Deep Death Drowning Beach, and we are swimming out, and dragging 'em back to shore as fast as we can, making sure they're breathing, and swimming back out.

And sometimes the screams, from everybody involved, are very loud indeed.

So if, for instance, a client calls me at noon on a Tuesday, and I'm in meetings with clients until seven pm that evening, they probably won't get a call from me that day. Just how it is, sorry.

Is there a moral here? Probably.

The moral is to assume that your firm is working hard to help you, and not ignoring you.

If you don't get a return call, try an email. One day two months ago, there was some sort of glitch with directing traffic on our phone system, which is somewhat overloaded right now, because there are creditor calls, and potential client calls, and calls from a Judge's office, and calls from a partridge in a pear tree. Made for an exciting day.

And all those calls are important, and all of 'em get returned as quickly as can be; but if it's impossible to return because the caller won't pick up, or has a full voicemail box, that's more difficult to address.

But the impossible CAN be done, of course; we do it every day.

But it's harder to make some people happy than others. It may be in a case that we make ten million dollars of debt go away.

Most clients are fairly happy about that. At least one was deeply irritated that it was such a pain in the behind, and took longer than he'd scheduled it to take. Took an extra meeting or two with the trustee, too.

But bankruptcy is a stressful thing, and many clients are stressed to beat the band before, during, and after the process, and it takes them substantial amounts of time until they're more relaxed.

But eventually that happens. Usually.

p.s. remember, there are Arizona bankruptcy lawyers and bankruptcy docu-prep services who promise in their advertising, "Incredibly easy bankruptcy. By phone, or by telepathy! You don't have to fill anything out, ever! Money back guarantee! No impact on your credit rating".

And if you believe them, please, please hire them, not me. I promise a really big ol' pain in the behind, and suffering, and form filling until your fingers fall off, and a reasonably good chance we can fix your problems, even after the 2005 Amendments to the Bankruptcy Code.

Oh, yeah. This thing is a process. All clients, without exception, get moderately tense as they move right up to the point of filing, because they feel somehow that filing is the solution. It is not, of course. It is the start of one to three years under Bankruptcy Court jurisdiction, and after the filing, there are still many miles to go before we sleep.

And if the filing happens before the schedules are correct, and before the client has used the last paycheck to buy food, fuel and provisions, and make a mortgage payment, or if the client has a tax refund coming and has not yet received it, or the client has recently made big preference payments, filing in a hurry is a really, really bad idea.

Really.

p.s. NO, personal injury lawsuits are NOT exempt in the State of Arizona!

So it is better to hurry by going slowly and carefully.

NOTHING HERE CONSTITUTES LEGAL ADVICE RE A CHAPTER 7, CHAPTER 13, CHAPTER 11, OR CHAPTER 12. FIND AN ARIZONA BANKRUPTCY LAWYER WHO IS BOARD CERTIFIED IN BANKRUPTCY LAW, AV RATED, AVVO 10 RATED, ON SUPERLAWYERS, OR JUST VERY EXPERIENCED AND A FORMER CHAIR OF SOME BANKRUPTCY SECTION OR COMMITTEE. NOTHING HERE MAY BE USED AS LEGAL ADVICE IN CONNECTION WITH ANY BANKRUPTCY, WHETHER THAT BANKRUPTCY IS IN PHOENIX, GLENDALE, TEMPE, MESA, SCOTTSDALE, OR ANYWHERE ELSE.

Full post as published by Arizona Bankruptcy Attorney Blog on March 18, 2010 (boomark / email).