Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Bankruptcy Reform (a comparison of doctors and lawyers)

An article at MSN.com talks about the bankruptcy reform legislation recently passed by Congress. An interesting part of the article mentions the probable effect of the legislation on bankruptcy lawyers:
Ehrenberg sees another change in the new bankruptcy law that could affect women. Attorneys will now be liable for inaccuracies in a debtor's bankruptcy papers."They're going to have to investigate their own clients," he says. "It's widely believed in the bankruptcy community that many attorneys who provide moderate-cost legal services will pull out because they can't afford to do the case for that amount of liability for the same price. It would not be surprising that women would be adversely affected by not being able to find affordable legal representation."
So for bankruptcy lawyers who provide services to poor/lower middle class clients, the liability may outweigh the payment received for the services. Sounds similar to the situation that doctors who see Medicaid/uninsured patients are in. Of course, most doctors continue to provide these services, at least on a limited basis. It will be interesting to see if the lawyers do.

2 comments:

Edwin said...

Really useful data, much thanks for your article.
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Anonymous said...

This will not succeed in reality, that is what I think.
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