Printer-Friendly
Email this Story
Post a Comment (0)
Bankruptcy Is Booming Business
Bankruptcy Is Booming BusinessLocal law firm inundated with filings
By Bill Walsh
Times-Democrat Staff Writer
The economy has created yet another empty storefront on Culpeper Street in Warrenton; the small office next door to the Times-Democrat office closed several weeks ago.
The closing is bankruptcy-driven.
Well, sort of.
Attorney John Carter Morgan, Jr., is so swamped with clients and filings that he has moved to a larger suite of offices at 98 Alexandria Pike. He is confident that another local lawyer will be joining his practice in the next few weeks, and is negotiating with a third member of the bar from Northern Virginia.
"I need help," Morgan said. "When you first put your toe in the water in bankruptcy, it's pretty dry, pretty boring," he said of his recruitment effort. "Once you get into it and really understand the nuances of the code, it gets pretty exciting."
Support staff continues to grow as Morgan files about 10 new bankruptcies every week. He could do 20, he said, if there were a few more attorneys helping him, or if there were more hours in the day.
Not all of the burgeoning business originates here. Some months ago, Morgan "bought the rights to '1-800-bankrupt' for the whole State of Virginia," he said last week, and business is pouring in from well beyond Fauquier's borders. "I sent a package to a lady in Pulaski the other day," he noted.
Still, most of his business is in the Western District, he said, with clients primarily in Orange, Culpeper, Greene, Madison, Albemarle, Louisa, Spotsylvania, Page, Rappahannock, Warren and Fauquier counties, "pretty much in that order."
Until recent times, housing was the most significant driving force behind his business boom. More recently, "we are seeing people who are unemployed. It is amazing how many people come in and their income is unemployment [insurance]," he said.
"Then there is the old traditional, 'I piled up my credit cards, and it is just overwhelming, and I've got to do [bankruptcy],'" Morgan said. "I see a lot of that as the cause."
Morgan is heading to a seminar in Chicago in late May that promises to teach him how to better organize his office, how to get bankruptcy filings "in an efficient, mechanized system," he said.
"They've got [bankruptcy lawyers] in Chicago who are grossing $6 million a year," he said. "If I do five a day, I'm looking at $2.5 million a year. I see us doing that."
At least for the next three to five years, he reckons, or thereabouts — depending on what Congress does to try to cure the stricken economy.
Philosophically conservative, Morgan is leery about anything that goes on in Washington, even apart from the direct effect it might have on his business.
"All these make-work programs create weak people, in my opinion," he said of at least parts of the stimulus package.
"I was raised in a capitalist country...that has become very socialist. Seeing all these social programs reminds me of the Depression, which lasted so long because they gave out all this money.
"If you give away money, people are going to take it," Morgan said, "and when they do they become weak, they are not out there building their own business, doing the things that capitalists are supposed to do."
That said, Morgan derives a great deal of personal satisfaction from the people-helping aspects of his job.
When the phones ring in the new offices, "the person on the other end is in pain, maybe having health problems as a result of their financial situation," he said. "We need to get an appointment, need to get them in here so that they can calm down.
"I'm amazed," he added. "Nine out of 10 people will stand up to leave saying, 'oh, man, I fee so much better.' What a gratifying thing for me. I'm doing a service for people. Never have I felt more attuned to helping people."
Morgan aligns these two seemingly dichotomous philosophies through his recognition that bankruptcy is a business tool — nothing more, nothing less.
Abraham Lincoln declared bankruptcy, Morgan said, as did another U.S. president, William McKinley. "Donald Trump just filed for the sixth time," he said.
"My philosophy remains very conservative, going back to 1802, when a government that was established for a capitalist purpose, had its relief valve [bankruptcy] established for its capitalist purpose," he said.
That, and an understanding of where fault so often really resides — not with the people who took bad loans, but with the banks that extended them.
Banks, he said, "are simply getting what they deserve" for doing away with their own system of checks and balances in lending procedures.
You must be logged in to post a comment.