Practice and Procedure

Knowing who your client is and what duties you have is a problem in cases ranging from the mega Caesars bankruptcy case to actions involving a distressed small family business that is jointly owned by several relatives. This presentation will address several attorney/client ethical issues, both in and out of bankruptcy, when jointly representing clients, including practical considerations when representing a group of closely related businesses, attorney/client privileges between multiple clients, and state and federal law ethical issues related to “who is your client.”

This panel will discuss data-retention concerns for bankruptcy trustees.

This panel will discuss the recent changes to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure as they pertain to e-discovery, as well as recent case law interpreting the new rules in the bankruptcy context. Our e-discovery expert and our bankruptcy practitioners will discuss the rules from the perspective of debtors, creditors and litigation targets in commercial bankruptcy cases.

In his popular poem, All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten, writer Robert Fulghum proclaimed: “Most of what I really need To know about how to live And what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten.” Attorneys and others in the legal profession are often required to address challenging questions about ethics and unprofessional behavior. When faced with these issues, would you make the “right” call? You be the judge with interactive voting when faced with real issues from actual scenarios attorneys have had to address.

Efficient and effective preparation of petitions is a core competency for debtors’ lawyers. To that end, this panel will examine such issues as counsel’s duty to investigate a debtor’s financial affairs, best practices for doing so, appropriate use of staff, avoiding ECF misuse, and the consequences of failing to discharge these duties.