Consumer

Join members of the ABI Task Force on Veterans and Servicemembers Affairs as they provide updates on the HAVEN Act and other important legislation, as well as laws relating to veterans and insolvency.

This panel will discuss new movements in foreclosure practices and procedures post-COVID-19, much ado about In re Kinney, dealing with mortgage payment issues at the end of a chapter 13 plan, Rule 3002.1 concerns and remedies, whether to forbear or not to forbear, and implications of COVID-19 forbearance relief options and bankruptcy.

This panel will discuss issues affecting the elderly in bankruptcy cases, including attorney misconduct, scams and identify theft, childrens’ mishandling of parents’ assets, wills, trusts, life estates and judgments, and reverse mortgages.

Learn about the hot buttons, goals and objectives of state and federal taxing authorities in the zone of insolvency during this lively session.

Learn about the hot buttons, goals and objectives of state and federal taxing authorities in the zone of insolvency during this lively session.

Your law practice is not the same thing as your law business. This panel drives this distinction home — from setting up your practice to selling it when you are ready to retire. It isn’t just about your clients; it also is about you and how your future self will fare in retirement. The pandemic has given you an amazing opportunity; seize it!

The pandemic taught us all how to work remotely and divide our tasks to get the job done. This panel is comprised of both virtual and in-office paralegals who understand how their role between attorney and client operates, as well as what they can bring to improve the experience for both you and your clients. Understanding the paralegal perspective provides greater insights into how you can use their knowledge and abilities to accelerate your practice and increase your bottom line.

This panel will discuss why understanding gender identity is important to your practice, with a focus on key concepts and terms, gender identity/expression, sexual orientation and pronoun usage, and how we can best implement gender identity/expression in our professional lives.

Mention “artificial intelligence,” and most people start rolling their eyes and making jokes about Skynet. But today’s A.I. is changing the way that many law firms operate. Rather than replacing lawyers, A.I. is taking over more and more of the grunt work that prevents lawyers from doing the higher-level work that is necessary for their practices — by streamlining case searches, brief-writing and a whole host of tasks you might not even have considered.

Sponsored by ABI's Consumer Bankruptcy Committee It is commonly understood that student loans are nearly impossible to discharge in bankruptcy. The standard has become mythical — akin to a “certainty of hopelessness.” Are the Brunner and totality-of-the-circumstances tests realistic standards? If not, what should legislators consider as an alternative? Will successful litigation break the mythical standard, and what could that look like? The prevalence of these cases is increasing every day, as courts are asked more often to evaluate the appropriateness of, and apply, these impossible standards. Simultaneously, the total amount of U.S. student loan debt continues to accelerate toward $2 trillion. Join ABI’s Consumer Committee as two consumer bankruptcy experts, Ed Boltz and Ray Hendren, debate what can — and should — come next.