Jazz Up Your Bankruptcy Practice

Meet me in New Orleans.

That’s where the bankruptcy action will be at the end of October.

It’s NACBA’s 2013 Fall Workshop

But early-bird sign up is over at the end of this week, September 6th.

Three tracks

With longer sessions for more in-depth treatment, the workshop is organized into three tracks

Fundamentals

Evidence, Mortgages, and Secured Claims

Office Management

You can bounce between tracks to pick the things most relevant to your practice.

Hallway magic

California transplant Jay Fleischman coined the phrase “hallway magic” to describe the unscripted learning that goes on between workshop sessions. It is, truly, magic.

Exchange ideas, rants, challenges with others in the hallways, and you learn something unexpected.

Sit, not with your friends, but with new faces, and you expose yourself to new ways to approach clients, judges, and the puzzle of making a living serving those who are broke. (My kids could never understand how that worked.)

Maybe I drop in on Rachel Foley‘s track and see what ideas are floating around Office Management.

Professional growth required

I was sworn in to the California bar 35 years ago. While a bunch of my classmates at Hastings never practiced, or gave up law almost as soon as they started practice, I’ve continued to find law challenging and satisfying for decades.

In large part, I think that’s because I fell into bankruptcy law, where you deal with the overlay of federal bankruptcy law over state law rights.

Interesting things happen in the interstices.

But it takes events like the workshops to step away from bankruptcy law at the particular level and see issues new ways. I am always blown away at how often I see a new connection, a new complexity, or a new strategy when I go to a seminar.

Think you’ve mastered the law, and you are heading for a trainwreck.