Description

Career Advisor’s Guide to Starting a Solo Bankruptcy Firm: Exploring a New Career Path.  Law school career advisors serve as a vital lynchpin between the college of law and alumni success.  Career advisors are committed to alumni success.  Alumni should view law school career advisors as a partner in their professional development, especially those alumni exploring a new career path or re-entering the job market.

Let’s face the truth together.  For some alumni, the law school experience was nerve-wracking, frustrating, and sometimes humiliating. Others find post-graduate life as a practicing lawyer disappointing or stifling.  This book was written for alumni and career advisors who can help guide struggling alumni. Some alumni may be exploring a new career path because they are unfulfilled by their current position.  Other alumni may be attempting to re-enter the job market after years away from the profession.  This author sought career advice himself because he had an entrepreneurial gene that demanded independence and felt stifled in his career working for other lawyers.  He wanted to set his own agenda, work the hours he wanted to work, pick the substantive area of law he wanted to practice, and market to the clients he wanted to serve.  Plus, the author wanted to keep the profits he earned.

Career advisors are urged to preach a simple mantra to alumni: INVEST IN YOUR FUTURE!  This book should be used by alumni who want to explore a new care path as a solo practioner and start building their own law firm.  They worked hard in college and again in law school.  Now it is time to reap the rewards of their intensive legal training.  Earn the profits they deserve!  Develop pride in themselves and earn respect from their peers.  Alumni who possess a heartfelt desire to build a respected legal career, along with the vision and drive to succeed, should keep reading and embrace the steps set forth in this book.

This book is dedicated to the young lawyers who are unfulfilled working as associates for other lawyers or who recently graduated from law school with the courage to “hang out a shingle” and start their own law firm.  He especially encourages young lawyers to consider starting a bankruptcy law firm as he did many decades ago.   The author shares his 30+ years of legal experience and offers tips on starting a law firm in the current legal environment.  This book provides concrete guidance about issues the author wished someone had taught him before he started his own law firm.

Some lawyers have the courage to open a solo-practice law firm.  Other lawyers start a law firm with one or two other lawyers they know and trust.  There is strength in numbers.  It is appealing to young lawyers in particular to have a law school classmate or fellow associate nearby for support.  Others establish an “affiliation” with an existing firm.  Sometimes a lawyer needs another lawyer to brainstorm and bounce ideas around.  This book provides lawyers with a step-by-step manual for filing their first Chapter 7 case.  Included is a line-by-line analysis of the official bankruptcy forms: petition, Schedules A-J, Statement of Compensation, Statement of Intent, Statement of Financial Affairs, Statement of Your Current Monthly Income, and Statement of Means Test Calculation.

Specific, real-world examples are offered for property in Schedule A/B, exemptions in Schedule C, secured creditors in Schedule D, unsecured creditors in Schedule E/F, executory contracts and unexpired leases in Schedule G, co-debtors in Schedule H, income in Schedule I, and expenses in Schedule J.  Separate chapters discuss the six types of bankruptcy cases, the timeline for Chapter 7 cases, alternatives to Chapter 7, a client’s eligibility for Chapter 7 relief, and the role of both the Chapter 7 panel trustee and the U.S. Trustee. Plus, separate chapters analyze the automatic stay injunction and the Chapter 7 discharge injunction.