How Did You Get Started in Bankruptcy ? Senior Fellows Committee
Dear Fellows -
As you probably know , the Senior Committee embarked on an ambitious project following last year ’ s Spring Meeting . We are trying to collect at least 150 narratives from Fellows who started working in the insolvency field in 1983 or earlier . We would like to know whether their involvement was intentional , accidental , expedient or happenstance ? Who , if anyone , were their mentors , role models , colleagues or adversaries ? Who were the Judges before whom they frequently appeared ? What cases of significance were they involved in ? If applicable , what was it like transitioning from the Act to the Code ?
We are happy to report that we have collected over 100 stories so far . We would love to hit 150 by the Spring Meeting . If you meet the time criteria and have not yet submitted your story , please help us out . The narrative should be 1,000 words or less , in Word format and emailed to jcudahy @ amercol . org .
Eventually , all of the stories will be posted in a section of our refurbished website and the Bankruptcy History Committee will work on compiling them for the Archives . If you are a mentor of a new Fellow , you can share your story with him or her .
To pique your interest , we are including two narratives that we trust you will enjoy . Richard Carmody
When I decided to go to law school after eight years in the Army Field Artillery , it was because law school didn ’ t care what your college major was . I was eight years removed from a BA in Finance with minors in History and Economics . My wife and I thought that we wanted to be close to the water so during second year I landed a summer clerkship with Akerman in Orlando . This was the summer of 1974 - the height of the Arab oil embargo and two years
Richard Carmody
after Disney World had opened . Akerman represented the Disney land company which held the ground lease on the hotels adjacent to the park . As I arrived , a hotel per month was filing bankruptcy . So the land company was a constant fixture in these reorganization cases . Akerman did not have an experienced bankruptcy lawyer , so I was tasked with helping get the strategies organized . The first Bankruptcy Judge I witnessed in action was Alexander Paskay who routinely chewed up lawyers and spit them out . Bankruptcy law with a heavy accent became even more challenging .
From that summer , I observed that most traditional law firms at that time didn ’ t have
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