Word: slating
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...accommodate a growing pool of potential customers, the Slate firm has eight full-time lawyers, seven part-time attorneys and 18 paralegal assistants working out of eight L.A. offices. All but about 340 of the 3,500 bankruptcies they handled last year were personal cases. Slate charges his customers an average of $350 each and claims only $10 of that is profit. Some other lawyers in the city ask as little as $250, and it is possible (though risky) for individuals to handle their own bankruptcy cases with do-it-yourself forms. But Slate promises his clients that an attorney...
...Slate's first move with a client is to determine whether a full, or straight bankruptcy is really necessary. "If you can feed your family and have enough to live on, you should pay your debts," he says. One practical reason: a court cannot discharge a bankrupt's debts again for six years, and if more serious financial troubles arise in that period, the debtor cannot escape his creditors. (About one in ten first-time bankrupts goes broke again...
When a client can pay, Slate recommends a so-called Chapter 13 bankruptcy, under which debts are worked off on an agreed-upon repayment schedule. But when the customer is really flat broke, Slate recommends a straight bankruptcy, which is less painful than it sounds...
...most liberal; it allows debtors to keep up to $20,000 equity in a house, $500 in a car, most household goods, tools of trade, $1,000 in a savings and loan association account and $1,500 in a credit union account. Moreover, under a ruling won by Slate a decade ago, Californians may convert any funds or assets into exempt categories before filing a bankruptcy petition...
...Slate takes pride in never refusing a client, and most of them leave his offices satisfied. Computer Designer Jerry Kiliszweski, for example, faced a $3,000 judgment for a faulty set of cabinets he had built, plus a host of unexpected medical expenses; creditors had garnisheed a quarter of his wages and attached his savings account, car and aged pickup truck. Within 24 hours after Kiliszweski saw Slate, the garnishment and attachments were ended. Recalls his wife Pat: "When I said I don't understand the judicial system very well, Mr. Slate just said, 'Well, honey, everyone...