HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — Chief Judge Frances Tydingco-Gatewood, with the help of bankruptcy experts, is aiming to demystify “one of the highly specialized areas of the law.”
As a follow-up to a recent legal conference that focused partly on the legal concern, Tydingco-Gatewood said there are more plans to continuously educate local lawyers in the works.
During the weeklong Pacific Judicial Council meeting held two weeks ago for members of the Guam Bar Association, Tydingco-Gatewood enlisted the help of Arizona bankruptcy Judge Daniel Collins and Arizona-based bankruptcy attorney Bryce Suzuki to further educate the legal community on the need to have a better grasp of bankruptcy, an area of the law they said most lawyers and attorneys would never experience.
The need in particular stemmed from conversations between Collins and Tydingco-Gatewood who expected a “tsunami” of bankruptcies when the Covid-19 pandemic began. Despite it never coming though, the return to normalcy could bring a rise.
“It’s going to get tougher for people and it’s going to get more normal and so I think that’s going to shake out a lot of people and businesses, so that bankruptcy, I think, is going to start amping up,” Collins said before explaining although it may not be dramatic, the legal community should be prepared.
“There’s going to be a need for the bankruptcy on the island and on the mainland and that’s the kind of thing we’re trying to do is educate lawyers to prep them to get ready for these filings we think are pretty inevitable,” Collins said.
A panel consisting of Collins, Tydingco-Gatewood and Suzuki started that preparation by introducing the Bankruptcy Academy at the conference.
Intersection
Throughout Tydingco-Gatewood’s legal career, which included being a prosecutor and judge in Guam’s local court, she said presiding over bankruptcy cases in the federal court felt like “organic chemistry” and understood why most lawyers want no part in it.
“I mean bankruptcies, nobody wants to touch it,” Tydingco-Gatewood, who is the bankruptcy judge for Guam, said.
However, when Tydingco-Gatewood began presiding over the Archdiocese of Agaña’s bankruptcy case, she relied on other judges such as Collins to help her through the process, which made her recognize a further need to make the legal community more comfortable, especially considering how it can be connected to other areas of the law.
Suzuki agreed and explained the goal is to demystify it for everyone.
“It’s a highly specialized area of law but it really isn’t rocket science, it’s not really organic chemistry. This is stuff that people can know and understand. I takes some effort, it takes some relearning because it is sort of counterintuitive but you can understand it,” Suzuki said.
From left, Arizona bankruptcy Judge Daniel Collins; Arizona bankruptcy attorney Bryce Suzuki; U.S. trustee for Guam, CNMI and Hawaii Curtis Ching and District Court of Guam Chief Judge Frances Tydingco-Gatewood.
