Legal News

Bankruptcy Lawyers (Yet Again) Say Their Time Has Come

By Dan Slater

OK, so perhaps we’re making restructuring work sound a bit more gnarly than it really is, but the word on the street is that the bankruptcy wave is back. Given a spate of filings from major retailers like Lillian Vernon and Sharper Image, and the news that in the first two months of 2008 18 U.S. companies with liabilities of $12.4 billion sought bankruptcy protection, the WaPo is reporting that attorneys are gearing up.

“A year or two ago, perhaps 5 percent of firms would say they’re thinking about adding bankruptcy attorneys,” said Jon Lindsey, managing partner of Major, Lindsey & Africa, a New York executive placement firm specializing in lawyers. “Now it’s about 85 percent. A few are far-sighted and strategic enough to say we will bring these people on, overpay them for first six months [before business picks up] . . . to have someone who knows how to pilot the lifeboat when the wave hits.”

It seems to the Law Blog that, regardless of how the economy is doing, bankruptcy watchers are always predicting an uptick in work. Way back in 2006, shouts and murmurs began when bankruptcy star Paul Basta moved from Weil to Kirkland shortly after James Sprayregen decamped Kirkland for Goldman Sachs. Then, this time last year, the same thing happened when Harvey Miller, a long-time Weil bankruptcy king who moved to investment bank Greenhill, pulled a head-fake and went back to Weil.

So is the wave really coming now? Fulbright’s Evelyn Biery thinks so. She told the WaPo she plans to double the number of lawyers to handle the surge. If there is a lesson in some of the larger bankruptcies happening now, she said, it is the value of restructuring sooner rather than later. “Many business owners, like American consumers, will go into a state of mild to deep depression, and through inaction lose their opportunity to fix the problem,” she said.

YouTube Videos of the Day: For those LB’ers who don’t recognize the person pictured above, that’s Laird Hamilton — the Man-God of big-wave Surfing. Forgive us, but we really can’t get enough of the insane videos of these guys doing their thing. For nice documentary footage of what’s widely considered one of Laird’s best rides — his conquering of Teahupoo, a vicious wave in Tahiti — click here. For one of the scariest rides we’ve ever watched, click here.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 05, 2008 (boomark / email).