I am a bankruptcy lawyer. The very words capture the worst fears of most people. (Financial failure) x (Failure of having to see a lawyer) = Failure2. So to announce my profession is almost as if the Grim Reaper has arrived on your doorstep to write about the profession of death.
I have practiced in this field constantly for over twenty-five years. But I have never thought about my job as steeped in failure until I just wrote the paragraph above. At the start of my career I thought of myself as a kind of commando swooping in at the brink of a financial catastrophe to bring restore order out of chaos. Those were big commercial bankruptcies and financial disasters—Drexel Burnham, the savings and loan industry, Enron, Worldcom. My self image, I realize now, had little to do with reality. Even the most urgent situations are addressed not by superheroics, but by a multitude of mundane decisions made in the screech of flourescent lit conference rooms distinguished only by the limited spectrum of professional décor: faux antique, faux modern, or barely functional.
As time has gone on, a career built on the illusion of importance surrounding the failure of massive enterprises has evolved into the far less melodramatic but grittier reality of the decline of the middle class. This decline I have witnessed in a the constant flow of countless consumer bankruptcies. The causes may vary: a foreclosure, a repossession, a garnishment, medical bills. But beneath the obvious cause is a deeper one: As wages have stagnated, people drifted into borrowing as a way of sustaining the middle class life they were raised to believe was their due. Things were supposed to get better; income would increase to pay the debt; and balance would be restored.
Except it hasn't. Like so much of the decline since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008, the decline of the middle class has happened silently. Even bankruptcy has declined. Bankruptcy filings are 25% less than when the financial crisis started in 2008; and they have declined approximately 45% since peaking at just over 1.5 million in 2010. Since 2010 the decline has been consistent.
A person might infer that the decline in bankruptcy is a sign of an improving economy. But it isn't. Others have written in detail about how the slow crawl out of the 2008 disaster has left many people behind; how many of the jobs that are now available are low paid, no benefits, no security positions that offer little in the way of hope of financial improvement. Some tout the advent of the "sharing economy"--Uber, Airbnb, and such. But how many of us if we had financial security and a steady job would really want to pick up strangers as passengers or invite them into our homes? The "Sharing Economy" is really a message to us all: "You are on your own."
I periodically sit in a courtroom and listen to a parade of cases before a judge. Many are what are called in the bankruptcy vernacular, "Lift stays." When a person files bankruptcy, the person automatically gets the benefit of a statutory injunction against foreclosures, repossessions, and most other efforts by lenders to realize on the money owed to them. A "lift-stay" (a motion for relief from the injunction) is the action a creditor brings to convince the bankruptcy judge that the debtor does not deserve this protection: the property is worth less than the borrower owes on the property; the borrower is behind on the loan and won't be able to catch up; the debtor is in some way dishonest. The creditor therefore claims to deserve to have the injunction lifted and take back the collateral—home, car, appliance—something the borrower really needs but can't afford any longer. The borrower will plead to leave the injunction in place. Whatever the legal justification for the borrower's plea, the goal is always the same: to buy enough time to convince the lender to reach some compromise.
Compromise is seldom forthcoming. One might yell about the greed of the lenders or the venality of the borrowers. But the real reason for the lack of compromise is that compromise is futile. Hope is gone. For a lender to compromise a debt, the lender has to believe that the borrower's situation is ultimately going to improve and the borrower will be able to live up to the compromise. The lenders know this isn't true. The lenders have too many cases to spend the time crafting a compromise that is doomed to fail. Best to foreclose or repossess, even if the house or car is just going to sit in the lenders inventory. Get the loan off the books and move on.
I watch this procession on a bench that speaks of the craftsmanship of days gone by. Heavy wood carefully scrolled and finished. A seat with what appears to have a moral purpose. Repose here and wait your turn but respect where you are. As your butt becomes uncomfortable from sitting and waiting, gaze at the high ceilings with the plaster freizes; reflect on the portraits of former judges; watch the backs of lawyers at counsel table and the and the judge sitting on his dias bench while justice being done to others as it will be done to you. This is a courtroom built by a society with confidence in its workings and in its institutions. It was a place of hope.
Perhaps it still is. Perhaps my disappointment with the proceedings is the cynicism of old age when the present seems to always compare unfavorably to the past in which I matured. I want to believe things are otherwise. I hope.
