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Join ABI Editor-at-Large Bill Rochelle as he hosts a panel of bankruptcy judges to discuss circuit splits on important consumer bankruptcy issues. This panel will be presented in a fun game-show format where the judges will vote to resolve the issues before they reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

This session will cover barriers to wellness for lawyers, and why lawyers are often reluctant to seek help. This panel will also include achievable strategies that lawyers can employ to enhance their well-being. In addition, this program will review lawyers' ethical obligations, and how enhancing personal well-being and adopting strategies for balancing life’s demands can enhance their ability to comply with these obligations.

The Eastern and Western Districts of Wisconsin, along with Florida’s Middle District, have all set up successful mortgage-mediation programs. This panel will spill the details on how they did it, particularly the ways in which they used web-based portals for document exchanges. Also on tap: the role of mediators and the court’s role in overseeing order processes and timelines.

Law school can seem like a long time ago, especially when a client walks in the door wanting help on filing for personal bankruptcy. This session will provide an overview of chapter 7: the players, bankruptcy estate, automatic stay, initial consultation and means test. Included in the discussion will be exemptions, preparing schedules, the relevant Bankruptcy Code and Rules sections, local rules, and how to know whether your client can or must redeem, reaffirm or surrender. Brush up on your skills and learn what you need to know about one of the core chapters of consumer bankruptcy.

My Cousin Vinny may be one of the best movies about lawyers ever made. That’s not an exaggeration…if you’re thinking about attorney ethics! The number of professional responsibility lessons one can learn from this cinematic masterpiece is incredible! Join the CLE Performer, Stuart Teicher, Esq., as he runs through this classic and covers some important ethics topics. They include: competence (Rule 1.1), confidentiality (Rule 1.6) and lies/deception (Rule 8.4), and more!

Successful consumer bankruptcy cases often hinge on the intake process, particularly the details gathered on the intake form. What questions should be asked? What resources should be used? Discover best practices for getting the right information from the very beginning, which can avoid all kinds of headaches later. (No one wants to discover a fraudulent transfer at the 11th hour!).

To ease the financial fallout from the pandemic, there could be increased congressional interest in consumer bankruptcy reform. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Jerrold Nadler already have proposed a complete overhaul of the consumer bankruptcy system and a new chapter 10 for all individual debtors. Several pending legislative proposals would make it easier to discharge student loans in bankruptcy. Profs. Robert Lawless and Adam Levitin will explain these proposals, the motivating factors behind them, and what else might be coming in the consumer bankruptcy world.

This session will discuss how to best catalog use-case questions that matter, enumerating relevant metadata, and then explore tools that can be used to determine the answers.

The risks of integrating AI into the practice of law are important to consider. It requires answering complex questions around bias, transparency, defensibility, and more. But, on the other side of the conversation, there’s an equally important question worth pondering over: If AI does indeed demonstrably enhance the competence of legal representation, could it then be unethical not to use AI? Join us for what is sure to be an exciting discussion featuring some of the most interesting voices at the intersection of AI and the law.