Bankruptcy

Attorney-Client Relationship: Why Did My Attorney Terminate Our Contract?

By Karen Oakes, Southern Oregon Bankruptcy Attorney

Recently, one of my chapter 13 clients called my office to tell us he was moving to the opposite end of the state.   My client (still in the preparation stages of filing) wanted me to continue to be his bankruptcy attorney.  He was angry that I would not agree to continue to represent him and that our contract had been terminated.    Why would I do this?  Location  Location Location.  

While Oregon has only one judicial federal district, there are two divisions.   My office is located in the Eugene Bankruptcy Division.  The Portland  Bankruptcy Division (and the Portland clerk’s office) handles all bankruptcy cases filed in Oregon from roughly the top third of the state from West to East and up to the Washington line.   The Eugene Bankruptcy Division is assigned all the southern cases.    Debtors are fortunate in Oregon in that the bankruptcy trustee meetings for their case are not all held in Portland and Eugene, but in various temporary geographic locations (the bankruptcy clerk’s office assigns the location closest to the bankruptcy debtor’s home address).  This particular client’s meeting with the bankruptcy trustee would now be a Portland Bankruptcy Division case — and that meeting would be held about 8 hours away from my law office.   While it is not necessary to file bankruptcy in the same county that your attorney’s office is in, sometimes it is more practical to find an attorney whose office is closer to your residence.

Here in Oregon, if an attorney represents a debtor in bankruptcy, that attorney is expected to appear at the meeting of creditors and any other hearings on the case.   Appearance counsel may sometimes step in for the meeting of creditors.   Appearance counsel do not step in for hearings or trials on the matter.   The debtor’s attorney is the best one to show up in court and argue the debtor’s side. 

My (now former) client was angry at first.   He was willing to have an appearance attorney (a substitute) appear with him at the meeting of creditors; however, I was not.  Why?  Because it was not a good thing for my client to have a stranger who didn’t prepare his case, talk with him, and knew nothing beyond the paperwork to show up and represent him at that hearing.   And if anything went wrong during the case, anything that would require further legal hearings — he would have to find a new attorney midway through his case as that hearing would require an 8-hour drive to the hearing, time at the hearing, and then an 8-hour drive home.   And that would not be fair to the rest of my clients to have me unavailable due to being on the road for a hearing.   At some point, I would have to withdraw as either the costs of representing the client would be too high for the client or too expensive for my office to have me gone from the office.   Once all the additional issues were explained to the client, he was happy with my decision to terminate our contract. 

Sometimes attorneys  have to make the decisions that make no one happy.  I liked my client.  He liked our office.   But…long distance lawyering is just not practical.

Full post as published by Bankruptcy Law Network on August 22, 2010 (boomark / email).