BANKRUPTCY PRO BONO — YOU CAN DO IT

By ANN D. ZEIGLER


Call 713-228-0735. Ask for Sean.

No, I didn’t see this scrawled on a wall somewhere, although it should be in every lawyer’s rolodex, Palm Pilot and speed dial. It’s the number for Sean Palmer, pro bono coordinator for the Houston Volunteer Lawyers Program (HVLP). It’s the number you call to become a hero to a desperate person, even if you have absolutely no clue how bankruptcy works.
HVLP has all the forms you need and will hook you up with a mentor and, more importantly, a client. Don’t worry, you can restrict the number of cases you take, and the program is set up to guide the completely inexperienced non-bankruptcy lawyer through the process.
Here’s what will happen. An individual requesting a lawyer contacts HVLP. HVLP’s screening attorney verifies the individual’s income and assets. If they are extremely low ($1,000 per month income or below), Lone Star Legal Aid takes over, but only if it has an available lawyer. If the individual’s income and assets are significantly above the legal aid program’s guidelines, HVLP refers the individual to Houston Lawyer Referral Service for a low-fee or regular-fee attorney. If the income and assets are only slightly above the poverty level (no more than $16,000 in annual income), HVLP goes ahead. The screening attorney interviews the individual to find out the nature and scope of the person’s legal needs. If it includes bankruptcy, you may get the email notice from HVLP attorney Tom Anthony that you have a new client.
What you get in addition to the email is a fully developed information packet to use when you do your own preliminary interview and prepare to file the bankruptcy case. With the completed intake questionnaire you get the creditor list (including the most recent statement from each creditor) and the filing fee check. You also get HVLP’s retainer agreement, and the progress forms and completion form you will use to keep HVLP’s coordinators posted on the progress of the case. Then it’s up to you. Every form you need is available, and mentors are standing by to tell you how it all works and to coach you through the case.
Bankruptcy solo practitioners Ken Thomas and Tom Black recently received awards from the Houston Bar Association’s Bankruptcy Section for their dedication to pro bono bankruptcy representation.
Ken received the Section’s 2003 annual award for his work in mentoring inexperienced practitioners who take pro bono assignments from the Houston Volunteer Lawyers Program. Tom received the award as the 2003 “Star Volunteer”—taking 22 pro bono bankruptcy cases and eight other cases from HVLP.
Other “star” bankruptcy pro bono volunteers for 2003 included John Burger (12 cases), Don Knabeschuh (five cases), Robert Hohenberger (mentoring many cases), and Rogena Atkinson (six cases since being licensed in 2001). And Bankruptcy Judge Wes Steen gets off-the-record credit for pushing the volunteer recognition awards.
Speaking of bankruptcy judges and credit for HVLP’s existence, Judge Karen K. Brown says that Pat Hughes, Tom Brandt and several other bankruptcy lawyers started the program. When I asked Pat about the program, he said Judge Brown started it. Here’s one version of the story, pulled from many sources. Judge Brown recollects a long history of judges picking lawyers from the benches to take over pro se cases where it became obvious the debtor was financially unable to afford a lawyer, not capable of adequately representing himself or herself (including for language reasons), and the results were about to be disastrous.
In the late 1990’s she attended a judicial education program and found out from another judge about a pro bono program that the American Bar Association was trying to pull together, with a pilot program being organized in Houston by Pat Hughes. She linked up with Hughes, who was already busy with Bruce Ruzinsky, Elizabeth Guffy, and Tom Brandt on a pro bono referral program. They were working with Ken Keeling to help identify and shut down fraudulent bankruptcy petition preparers, and with John Burger for issues concerning Spanish-speaking debtors who have difficulty with the legal system, including finding bankruptcy lawyers.
Hughes says some of the early barriers to getting the program off the ground were the conflicts issue, lack of malpractice insurance for volunteers, and lack of bankruptcy training for inexperienced but willing lawyers. Ruzinsky and Elaine McAnelly organized a procedure for obtaining blanket waivers of conflict from many large lenders, credit card agencies and other large institutions for low-dollar debts. Trey Wood headed up the form file project, which has resulted in an available library of every form you will ever need. And by linking with the HBA, the project was able to arrange for malpractice insurance to cover the volunteers.
Judge Brown also mentioned another off-again, on-again pro bono program. Randy Williams, Ken Thomas, John Smith and others organized a program to coordinate between volunteer bankruptcy lawyers and the University of Houston Law Center’s student-run legal aid clinic. Because the students were only in the program on a semester basis and many bankruptcy cases are not concluded that quickly, the bankruptcy portion of that clinic experience has not been a stable source of assistance to low-income individuals with financial troubles. I spoke with Williams about the program. He points out that in most large cities, the pro bono programs are coordinated by the local law school (singular). Houston has three law schools, so direct coordination between the student clinics and the bar here is not a straightforward matter.
Diane McManus of Lone Star Legal Aid (formerly Gulf Coast Legal Foundation) says her organization provides a limited range of bankruptcy representation to individuals with total income from all sources of less than 125 percent of the federal poverty limit ($1,000 per month for a single individual) and very limited assets. If the individual has assets or income above the Legal Aid limits, Lone Star’s lawyers refer the individual to HVLP. Roz Jackson and Robert Sohns are in-house attorneys doing (among many other things) bankruptcy representations. Lone Star Legal Aid also has regular volunteers doing bankruptcy work, including Charles Tucker, who took so many pro bono cases that they have made him a “private attorney involvement” attorney, so he actually gets a small payment for some of the cases. These cases require experienced bankruptcy volunteers, and are primarily Chapter 13 cases involving essentially catastrophic situations. Interested in volunteering? Contact Robert Sohns at 713-982-1961 or go to their website at www.LoneStarLegal.org.
Texas Accountants and Lawyers for the Arts (TALA) also needs you if you are an experienced bankruptcy lawyer and willing to represent a low-income artist. Trena Denley, TALA’s mediation services coordinator reports that her organization gets one to two requests per month for bankruptcy assistance. But TALA has no bankruptcy volunteer attorneys, so those artists needing bankruptcy help are turned away without assistance. Since Denley interned at the Houston Lawyer Referral Service while she was in law school, she is able to informally lateral some of those requests to HVLP. Interested in helping an artist? TALA is located at 1540 Sul Ross, across from the Menil Museum. You can reach them at 713-526-4876 or at their website, www.talarts.org.
Just to clarify things, this is the distribution among the various bankruptcy volunteer programs: Lone Star Legal Aid takes individuals at or very near (and, of course, below) the poverty level and handles them in-house or refers them to its pro bono volunteer lawyers. HVLP takes individuals with slightly higher incomes and assets and also refers them to pro bono volunteer lawyers. The Houston Lawyer Referral Service is a sign-up referral service for low-fee, rather than pro bono, representations. TALA has a sliding scale for fees for its referrals.
Sean Palmer says that 88 bankruptcy cases were referred out to volunteers in 2003, a 22 percent increase over the previous year. I asked around, and bankruptcy lawyers agree it isn’t getting better out there, particularly for the elderly and disabled facing disastrous medical expenses. The 20-somethings making the big credit card mistake are not the bankruptcy bar’s major concern any more. Barbara Rogers, who takes three to four cases a year from HVLP plus another two or three from other sources such as church referrals, reports that she is seeing more people on fixed incomes in financial nightmares brought on by attempting to use credit cards to solve their medical and drug cost problems. Other attorneys confirm that the new group on the bankruptcy block is the elderly. Randy Williams, a trustee and volunteer, says a few years ago he seldom saw anyone over 60. Now he sees several retired individuals every month. Many of them are desperate enough to try doing bankruptcy pro se.
The United States Trustee’s office, the section of the Justice Department that supervises the bankruptcy court system, also observes a pro se creditor problem, in some cases in addition to the pro se debtor. Analyst Barbara Griffin notes that the unrepresented divorcing or ex-spouse can create problems for himself/herself in a case where the debtor spouse is represented. The U.S. Trustee’s office can’t intervene when things go awry in such a case, but wants lawyers to know that HVLP can provide volunteer lawyers for these pro se participants in the case, also. Lawyers already in the bankruptcy case, as well as lawyers in the family law case, can give these struggling individuals a heads-up that help is available at HVLP.
Heroes as a group tend to be very modest. I asked Ken Thomas about his award and his response was the old Jack Benny joke: “I’m not sure I deserve this award. But then, I have arthritis and I’m not sure I deserve that either.” Tom Black said of his award, “Well, I guess they thought they had to give it to someone, and there I was.” All the people mentioned in this article are heroes, whether they care to admit it or not. If they can, you can.

Ann Zeigler practices in the bankruptcy section at Hughes, Watters & Askanase, LLP, representing Chapter 7 trustees, and is an associate editor of The Houston Lawyer.

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