2021, 2021 Rocky Mountain Bankruptcy Conference

The judges of this year's Rocky Mountain Bankruptcy Conference will hold in-depth discussions on navigating virtual hearings and what we have learned from the pandemic; the benefits of filing commercial cases in Rocky Mountain jurisdictions; gross-income calculations in light of the closures of small, closely held businesses; trends in consumer/small business cases during the pandemic; and ethics and professionalism in a (more) virtual world.

Covering a wide array of bankruptcy litigation matters, this session will focus on issues relating to stay relief, discharge litigation, and post-discharge injunction matters. Evidentiary considerations and standards for relief will be highlighted, along with case law developments and practice tips from the experienced panelists.

We often forget that what we say and how we say it can signal more than we intended. One of the primary ways in which "what we say"/"how we say it" creates such signals is with the wording of time entries, whether or not those time entries are ever reviewed by a bankruptcy court. Clients read bills, too, so if one wants to communicate that their work was valuable and efficiently performed, the fable of Goldilocks comes to mind: The time entries need to be "just right." When they're not, clients and courts can draw conclusions that we never intended them to draw.

This panel will focus on Congress’s new foray into streamlining small business reorganizations under the Small Business Reorganization Act of 2019, as amended by the CARES Act of 2020. The panelists will examine similarities and differences between subchapter V and traditional chapter 11 reorganization, debtor eligibility, and the role of the newly created position of subchapter V trustee. The panelists will then examine early decisions on these issues from bankruptcy courts around the country.