Practice and Procedure

Learn how to enhance your client and committee pitches, hone your panel presentations, and “wow” your court or your audience from this group of skilled advocates and public speakers. This workshop, suitable for attorneys of all levels, will provide you with tips, lessons and examples to help you improve your presentation skills.

Rarely has a hashtag so completely captured the urgency and gravity of a major shift in national consciousness. This panel of experts will lead an interactive discussion on issues confronting the legal profession in the #MeToo world, examining legal, practical and ethical considerations through a series of vignettes. What should be done about the difficult client that represents a significant portion of firm revenue? What are best practices for lawyers in supervisory and managerial roles? What resources are available to attorneys who find themselves subjected to inappropriate or actionable conduct? How may explicit or implicit bias and harassment play out in the adversary system and in negotiations, litigation and the courtroom? Finally, what is the role of the judiciary in addressing these critical issues? The panel will tackle these questions head-on in a plenary ripped from today's headlines.

Is the legal profession’s vision for the law firm of the future already outdated? Can the law firm of today cope with the incredibly dynamic and changing competitive legal services environment, or will it go the way of the dinosaur? Greater and new competition in the forms of artificial intelligence, disruptive technology, the Big Four accounting firms, enlarged in-house legal staffs, and alternative legal service providers are eating law firms’ lunch. Clients are demanding service, efficiency and transparency in a way that puts tremendous pressure on the traditional law firm model. On top of that, the battle for the best talent is intensifying while the very nature of that talent is transforming as millennials start to dominate the talent pool. Our panel will discuss what a law firm must do to evolve and survive and how it potentially can thrive in a rapidly changing legal market.

Calling all up-and-comers in the bankruptcy industry! Join us for this new, half-day program exclusively for emerging leaders attending the ABI Northeast Conference or Consumer Forum. We invite lawyers, financial advisors, bankers, etc. with less than 10 years of insolvency expertise, either consumer or business focus, to participate in an interactive program involving common insolvency issues facing junior insolvency professionals. Participants will break into small working groups led by emerging leader facilitators and bankruptcy judges to consider issues of substantive law as well as practical procedures for both the courtroom and boardroom. A reception for Emerging Leaders will immediately follow this program.

This panel will address various ethical issues including conflicts, chapter 7 bundling and payment arrangements, and chapter 11 retention and fee applications. Learn how to identify potential conflicts, and discover strategies to deal with them. The panel will also discuss the negotiation of fee agreements before and the application for payment of fees during bankruptcy cases.

This panel will address the selection and use of expert witnesses, including tips on how to select an expert, how to prepare an expert and what a judge might find most useful.

This panel will address numerous chapter 13 hot topics, such as the use of the national plan, modified national plan and local plans, the treatment of special claims in plans, end-of-case issues, the modification of plans and related topics.

Join authors of the newly published second edition of ABI’s Quick Evidence Handbook as they discuss best practices and inside tips for gathering and presenting evidence in bankruptcy court. The panel will explore common evidentiary issues encountered in a bankruptcy case and provide practical information for how to navigate those issues in a hearing or at trial. The webinar promises to be an interesting and valuable discussion for anyone participating in a bankruptcy litigation, from the novice lawyer approaching his or her first hearing or trial, to an experienced bankruptcy practitioner needing a refresher or new tips before heading into a contested hearing. This webinar is hosted by the Bankruptcy Litigation Committee.

Bankruptcy judges sound off on the best (and worst) behavior of our bankruptcy brothers and sisters. Join us in our first ABC-sponsored session!