Kansas City, MO—For Tracy Wrisinger of Kansas City's Sader Law Firm, learning the ins and outs of bankruptcy law started because of a desire to help small business owners.

“I have an MBA, and I've run a couple of small businesses, so I'm very much small business-oriented,” Wrisinger explained in a recent interview with Laws-Info.com.  “Many small businesses started going under about five or six years ago, so I started learning about bankruptcy to advise my clients, and in the process, learned that I really like this area of the law.”

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Contrary to what many people may believe about bankruptcy filers, Wrisinger says that most people who have debts discharged did nothing wrong.  “Most of my clients are not here because they were irresponsible or reckless, but because life happened to them,” she says.  “Either the economy happened to my business clients, or people have medical bills or lose jobs.  They feel overwhelmed and stressed, and it's a way to reorganize and help them regroup and get a fresh start.”

Over the years, Wrisinger says that she's learned a great deal about how to practice bankruptcy law effectively for her clients.  According to her, “there's no substitute for doing high quality work.  You need to be totally honest and forthright, even when sometimes those conversations get a little difficult for someone else to hear, and to do it with compassion.  Everyone deserves respect, everyone deserves honesty, and everyone deserves 100 percent of your effort.”

While Wrisinger, a former teacher, says that client interaction is her favorite part of her job, it's far from the only part.  “The practice of law is not as glamorous as you might see on TV or what people may think it is,” she explains.  “It's a lot of hard work—it's research, drafting, and writing.”

Wrisinger believes that her teaching background has helped her to create more satisfying client interactions.  “A lot of what I do is educating my clients about what the process is and how it's going to help them move forward,” she says.

Today, bankruptcy filings are down, which Wrisinger says has presented a problem for many attorneys who started working bankruptcy cases recently.  “There are attorneys who got into it two or three years ago, thinking that it was a target-rich environment, but it's a lot more complicated than even other attorneys realize,” she says.  “There are nuances in every case that require a specialized understanding of the bankruptcy code and it's a different court system.  At Sader Law Firm, we're very busy, but that's just because we're a firm that focuses and specializes in it.”

The best way for attorneys to learn the ins and outs of bankruptcy practice is to talk to attorneys who are experts, according to Wrisinger.  “Make sure that if you don't have a mentor in your firm, you get a mentor who is experienced with bankruptcy, because it is a unique area of law that has a lot of nuance and is fraught with potential for malpractice.  Don't be afraid to ask for help or advice.”

Avoiding bankruptcy, Wrisinger says, is often a matter of knowing when to downsize your life: “Everything is a balancing act between your income and expenses, and if your income drops, you can't afford to live with the same expenses.  That means that if you're trading down your car or trade down your house to an apartment or sell stuff, it's not a sign of incompetence or being a loser—it's a sign of being responsible with what you have coming in.”

If you would like to know more about Tracy Wrisinger and The Sader Law Firm click here.