My background to prepare me for my current practice is actually kind of odd because when I initially got out of law school, I was hired to second chair, which is basically litigation or keep all the paperwork files moving and stuff for a $4.5 billion dollar SNL for all of their commercial loan workouts throughout the country, which include bankruptcies and all that. So, I actually got experience from the creditors side doing the commercial litigation. I started filing consumer bankruptcies for that law firm and I was the litigator for a Chapter 7 trustee in Kansas initially, which is what I did when I did the commercial stuff litigation and just started filing consumer cases and that was back in 1991, I think it was when I first started doing that and from there just limited myself exclusively to consumer cases. Honors and awards there’s quite a few of them obviously over the years. Like I said I’ve been Missouri and Kansas super lawyer for the last 14 years all total.

I’m a certified consumer bankruptcy specialist by the American Board of Certification. I’m a member of the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcies. I’m a member of the National Association of Consumer Advocates. I’m a member of the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association, Kansas City Bankruptcy Bar Association, a member of the American Bankruptcy Institute. I’ve served on various committees of the ad hoc committee local rules committee.

Basically, it works with the bankruptcy judges to set the various local rules that we use. I’ve actually served as the chairman of that committee. I’ve served on several special rule’s committees both in the western district Missouri here, as well as the district of Kansas. Basically, these organizations are just organizations that specialize in consumer advocacy, consumer bankruptcies and of course the bankruptcy certification is you can actually get it in creditors rights or debtors rights and of course mines in consumers bankruptcies.