Bankruptcy Judge

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Bankruptcy Judge Elaine Hammond sits down with host M.C. Sungaila to demystify both bankruptcy law and the path to becoming a bankruptcy judge. Bankruptcy is a very specialized area of the law. Judge Hammond shares how she decided to be a bankruptcy judge, her journey to becoming one, and what her responsibilities are. She also gives some advice for those thinking about applying for the position and the process that goes along with it.

Relevant episode links:

Judge Elaine Hammond, Karen Scott – Past Episode, Cloud Cuckoo Land, All The Light We Cannot See, Station Eleven, The Glass Hotel

About Elaine Hammond:

M. Elaine Hammond is a United States Bankruptcy Judge for the Northern District of California in San Jose. A native of North Carolina, she received her undergraduate degree from Duke University, and her JD with honors from the University of North Carolina School of Law. Prior to taking the bench in 2012, Judge Hammond’s practice focused on representing debtors and creditors in commercial bankruptcy cases and out-of-court restructurings. She was a partner with the San Francisco firm Friedman Dumas and Springwater LLP. Prior to that she was an associate with Murphy, Sheneman, Julian & Rogers LLP. Judge Hammond began her legal career as a law clerk for the Judge Edward D. Jellen (ret.), also of the Northern District of California.

In this episode, I’m pleased to have joined Judge Elaine Hammond from the US Bankruptcy Court of the Northern District of California. Welcome, Judge.

Thank you for having me.

One of the things I’m interested in is sharing the range of ways you can be a judge, the different kinds of courts you can serve on the bench for, and the different ways of getting there. Certainly, you’ve spent some time mentoring in that regard on the administrative office of the court’s program on roadways to the bench for bankruptcy and magistrate judges. I thought it would be a great time since that was all fresh in your head to come on and talk about this. Also your own journey of how you decided you wanted to be a bankruptcy judge.

Originally, we did have Karen Scott, who’s a Magistrate Judge for the Central District of California talk about her path and the application process to that. If you are our first bankruptcy judge on the show, you’re trailblazing in that regard, at least in this context. First, it’s a very specialized area of the law. How it was that you decided that you wanted to in particular be a bankruptcy judge?

The truth is I came to be a bankruptcy attorney as the first step like most people become bankruptcy attorneys. We fell into it with no intention of becoming a bankruptcy attorney.

That so frequently happens.

You find your way there and it’s a great area of practice. I made it to bankruptcy because while I was in law school, my now-husband graduated a year ahead of me and returned to the San Francisco Bay Area. I needed a job in the Northern District of California and I applied to every clerkship that was available. I ended up getting a clerkship with a bankruptcy judge who’s now retired. I took his seat when he retired and he was a wonderful mentor.

After taking a bankruptcy class during my third year of law school, I came back and found it was a great fit. Bankruptcy is very much a law and motion practice, so you get a lot of court time and at the same time, by and large, you don’t have big discovery disputes. Historically, it’s often been said the documents are rarely in dispute. Here they are talking about what they mean. That tends to make a very collegial area of practice.

Plus, it is not unusual for attorneys to represent either a debtor or a creditor secured or unsecured. Since people are taking on different roles in the bankruptcy case, they are also more collegial because of that as well because they have to be careful that some of the arguments they make could be made by the other side as well.

They could be in that position in the next case.

As I said before, there’s a lot of collegiality within the bar and it’s not local bars. It can be all the parts around the country because you can file bankruptcy cases. It has very generous, shall we say, venue jurisdiction. People see each other in lots of different cases.

That makes a lot of sense because I had noticed that in consulting on bankruptcy matters. I thought, “This bar is very collegial. Not just regionally but everywhere.” That’s because they could well be practicing with each other in any location. It’s funny that you said you fell into it. Many bankruptcy lawyers I know say that. They’re like, “We didn’t know what was involved with this. We either didn’t study it in law school but we enjoyed it once we came into it because it’s so eclectic. It’s pretty meaty because you get to the substance,” as you mentioned pretty quickly.

We do. What I enjoy now as a judge is that bankruptcy has all different variations in it within the bankruptcy court. I have many Chapter 13 cases where people are primarily trying to save a home. There are a lot of Chapter 7 cases where they don’t have a home, for example, but they have a lot of debts and they can wipe out those pretty quickly and easily.

I have had multimillion-dollar corporate reorganizations and sales that are much more complicated. They generally have very sophisticated attorneys and very sophisticated arguments. That is always a constant push and pull looking for success in the case, which often requires both sides to agree to different things and to work together. Ultimately, a business doesn’t want to go under and a supplier, even though they were a creditor that owed a good bit of money, wants that company to survive as well because they want to continue selling goods to it or things like that.

Very rarely is bankruptcy winner take all. There is a lot of maneuvering between the different players to try and reach a resolution that will, in most reorganizations, seek to allow a business to reorganize, continue and hopefully be successful going forward. It’s not like a standard plaintiff-defendant where the defendant can be angry or the plaintiff can be angry because they don’t have to work together after it’s over.

There’s not an ongoing concern in that way. I hadn’t thought about that but that’s right, even though there might be some adversarial illness in this particular context. In the bigger picture, they both want each other to succeed in a way and they want to be able to have some ongoing relationship.

The other thing that’s unique about bankruptcy from a lot of other litigation is that no one has to have done anything wrong to end up in bankruptcy. Nothing criminal, either if it’s individuals or businesses but something has gone bad in the income expense trying to balance those out. The debtor doesn’t necessarily have done something intentionally wrong.

They may have made poor choices and maybe they need new people to lead the company and help with financial affairs but at the same time, the creditors haven’t done anything wrong by lending money or goods or anything like that. Now there are cases where people have indeed done wrong and we deal with that slightly but in the vast majority of the cases, things went bad. It wasn’t so much that people intentionally caused harm. When we have cases that relate to intentional harm, it’s normally a fraud case or something like that but that’s the outlier as opposed to the norm.

That’s a good point too and it could be completely outside someone’s control that the economy is a certain way and they were precarious at a certain point. It all converged and didn’t result in a great balance sheet, all of that.

Certainly, that’s true in the bankruptcy cases. In the individual cases, the variation is they had enough income, somebody lost a job, there was a car accident and they don’t have the money and now they have to get a new car that they did not have budgeted. Unfortunately, a lot of times, it’s a divorce, where you were barely making it by with two incomes and now trying to have two households with those same amounts of income. It’s hard and the numbers don’t work. That’s what bankruptcy is intended to try for reorganization and a fresh start to allow both people and companies to go forward where it’s beneficial.

How did you decide that you wanted to move from being an advocate in bankruptcy to serving as a judge?

When I clerked, I thought that it could be very isolated to be a judge because you don’t have that many people you’re constantly talking to then I realized you can also be isolated with that. I decided that wasn’t a good reason not to consider it because I did very much enjoy my time in the clerkship for two years. Frankly, somebody I had worked with mentioned that they had applied for a bankruptcy position that had been posted.

I had this moment of, “We can do that now? We’re at that level, we can try?” The next time an opening came up, I applied. Most people may not realize this, but the bankruptcy judge position and the magistrate judge positions have very similar processes for how you become a judge. You begin with an application that’s very much like applying to college. There are a lot of essays. They ask about cases you’ve been involved in and who the opposing counsel is. They want to know that information.

The bankruptcy judge and magistrate judge positions have very similar processes for how you meet the judge. You begin with an application that's very much like applying to college.

A lot of that is they’re going to use that to call those people you were litigating against to get a sense of what were you like. What’s your ethical presentation, how are you easy to work with, or something like that. That investigation based on the application is done by a Merit Screening Committee that has been in place in the Ninth Circuit for quite a while.

The district court runs a similar merit screening but it was a merit selection. From there, after that, there’s a second-round interview. For bankruptcy court judges, the second round is with a group of Ninth Circuit judges who are part of the bankruptcy selection committee for the circuit. There’s a chief of the chiefs, which is the senior-most chief judge of a bankruptcy court in the Ninth Circuit for that period of time to provide a little more bankruptcy-specific information as that final round interview is done. They interview, make their decision, recommend to the circuit, and at some point in time later, you find out who they have selected.

It’s the Article Three judges at the Ninth Circuit level who ultimately select the Bankruptcy Article One judges. For the magistrate judges, it’s the district judges that do that.

That is correct. I’ve heard at Ninth Circuit conferences, some of the judges talk about that they weren’t sure how this selection process would end up. I think some of the very senior judges were pleasantly surprised that it was a merit selection process. They managed to keep politics out of that and keep favoritism out of it.

Some of that may be that they didn’t know a lot of bankruptcy attorneys. They didn’t have any candidates of their own they wanted to push or anything like that but it’s worked out to be a very good process. Certainly, as a candidate and going through the process of being selected. They’re not trying to hide anything with it. They want people to apply. They want to know what the process is.

I would say one of my biggest surprises is the interview process which is what you would expect from interviewing in front of a group of appellate judges. You probably know that far better than I do. Once they’ve selected you, they are your biggest champions. They want the bankruptcy judges to succeed and do well and represent the Ninth Circuit well. That’s great after a competitive process to have that champions behind you.

That’s different from an elected or appointed process outside the judiciary because, through this process, they also get to know you. You’re working with judges who have selected you and also already know about you. At least those who are on the selection committee, hopefully, will smooth it a little bit more. Is it the case that if you’re not a bankruptcy lawyer, you should not apply to be a bankruptcy judge?

I don’t know of anyone within the Ninth Circuit who’s been appointed who didn’t have any bankruptcy experience. I do know some other circuits. The Seventh for a while had a reputation of looking for areas outside of bankruptcy for some other judges. You have to have some working knowledge.

Some working knowledge of it but maybe not your exclusive practice.

Sometimes real estate contractual or other issues may also be considered because of the spectrum from individual cases to the big reorganization. It’s hard to walk in and do that without having some experience with it. That being said, bankruptcies have gone up and down with the economy but sometimes countercyclically. You don’t have to necessarily have specialized in bankruptcy for your entire career. You need to have some familiarity with it and the ability to show that you can learn the rest.

Bankruptcies have gone up and down with the economy, sometimes countercyclically.

It tends to be a very specialized practice area and so having some familiarity with the concepts and some portion of it. Even if you haven’t done every bankruptcy case that you would encounter as a judge, it’s still helpful. What you said about how you came to apply is something that resonates with me because it’s similar to other comments that other judges have made. It’s either because you realize, “We’ve reached the point that we can do this in terms of experience.” Sometimes that creeps up on you.

The second part of it being that somebody else was applying or mentioned it and that opened you up to considering it. That’s frequently a story that I hear or another judge recommended that someone apply or consider applying. Sometimes having that nudge, whether it’s inadvertent from a colleague who’s applying or otherwise is what you need to get the ball rolling.

I think that’s true for a lot of people. That’s particularly true for women.

It’s so true because often we go, “These are the various criteria,” and we have to check off all of those before we can even consider applying as opposed to, “I’ve got 6 or 7 of those. That’s good and we’ll see what happens.” We tend not to do that. It’s good to demystify the process but also to think you’re going to make your best application and your best showing.

Maybe you don’t even know what might be needed on the bench at this point in time. For example, as you were saying, some circuits want more diversity and experience amongst the bankruptcy judges, even if you happen to have a different experience. That might be a plus in that particular round. You just don’t know.

It depends on how fast the turnover is within a district and when they’re likely to be opening some things like that too. I’m getting excited to how the circuit views it but they are not immune to wanting to have a very balanced bench in whatever way they can make that happen.

Don’t count yourself out, basically, if you’re interested. What advice would you give to those who are practicing some form of bankruptcy law and might be thinking about becoming or applying for a bankruptcy judge position? There are two different ranges. We were talking about this earlier in terms of those who showed up at the roadways to the bench conference. Those who are between maybe 5 and 15 years out and thinking about it in the future, then those who are more experienced might be much closer to applying.

If you meet the qualifications, you may need more years of experience than the minimum required. It could help at least but it doesn’t have to be double what it is. My piece of advice is to go for it. The worst that can happen is that you don’t get it. Frankly, I did not get the bankruptcy judgeship on my first try. I made it to the second round with the Court of Appeals judges.

They selected someone else and they sent a message back to apply again and I applied again. I was much more experienced in terms of what the process was going to be like and had a better idea of what they were looking for, which I could do. I just needed to demonstrate it to them in the course of an interview and my application. It worked the second time and that’s fine. Not everything is going to happen the first time but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try again certainly.

Frankly, you should go for the job because it’s the best job I’ve ever had. It’s wonderful and I first became a judge when I had two young elementary school-aged kids. It was amazing as a working parent because I had a great ability to control the schedule. Even when we had to deal with emergencies and move things around. I was inconvenienced but I still had some control over when we could make this, which is not what you get as an attorney. It is a job worth having and I am so grateful that I have it. I would encourage lots of other women to seek the position if they’re interested at all.

That’s such an important point too. Sometimes you have to try again in the application process and it can be crushing when it doesn’t happen the first time, especially because, as you said, it’s very involved. It’s like, “Here’s my professional life story laid out in front of you,” and everything you’ve ever done. It can be hard and you think, “Do I want to go through all that again?”

It’s so true that there are many people who say that. They did not get the position the first time they applied for it and sometimes the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, or 6th. It could be a lot but part of the selection process almost is that persistence. Do you feel like this is your calling? If you do then you will persist. If you don’t then you’ll stop.

I think you’re right about that.

It’s almost like part of the gauntlet that needs to be run in some way. Sometimes, it happens immediately for people. Other times, it doesn’t. It’s hard to pick yourself up and do that again. It was thoughtful of the Ninth Circuit judges to send that message back to say, “You’ve got some good stuff here. We’d like you to apply again.”

I will note that they sent it not just to me but to another candidate who ultimately is now a bankruptcy judge.

It’s nice because you’re like, “It’s disappointing. I didn’t get it,” but they’re saying “No, you’re on the track.”

You don’t get a lot of signs, so that was a great one to get.

That’s what I was going to say. It’s nice because otherwise, it’s like crickets. You don’t get any information. It’s a one-way information street generally in this process. It’s nice that was shared to encourage you to try again.

Indeed and I’m glad.

I always think that sometimes people have images of what it is to be a judge. It’s very different depending on which area you’re in and what judge you are. Being a trial judge and an appellate judge are different lives. Maybe you can share a little bit about what you do as a bankruptcy judge.

As I said before, it’s a significant law and motion practice. I have court 2 to 3 days of each week. Within a bankruptcy case, a bankruptcy case is normally known as Chapter 7, 13, or 11 and financial bankruptcy is the main thing. Within it, we have adversary proceedings, which are lawsuits within a bankruptcy case. I have a calendar for those adversary proceedings each week. I have a calendar for the main cases and a couple of different things that are added to that. We do that weekly. The schedule is constantly preparing for the upcoming hearing and having the hearing. Most of our rulings are oral as opposed to written rulings. That has to do with two factors.

There are what I call mother may I motions, where there’s not necessarily a dispute but there are some things that must be covered within it. They file the motion. There may or may not be opposition. We go through it and make sure they’ve covered the things that are required by the bankruptcy code then if they’re granted, they’ll move on their way, for example, to sell an asset or something like that.

There’s no reason for a written decision. There will be an order to follow. Alternatively, there are a lot of matters. They need to be decided quickly because if you’ve got assets that may be losing value or that could be increasing interest rates and you’re going to lose a sale if they can’t get it closed within a certain time frame and things like that. Again, even if there’s some opposition, you still work through the issues of what’s aligned with the code and what should happen.

They’ll normally issue an oral ruling with an order to follow as well. What bankruptcy has is that not all areas of practice are like that. If you spend too long, you may not have anything to work with. Both in the cost of attorney’s fees and also because there are almost no assets that increase in value while they are waiting on a trustee to sell them and things like that. There’s an urgency to move things forward because it’s probably not going to get financially better unless there is some big event that everybody is working towards on the horizon such as a sale. Again, that still needs to happen fast in most scenarios.

Those are what’s going on. That’s why there’s a lot of oral ruling and trying to be ready to rule from everything on the bench. The important is most of the things from the bench. There are summary judgment motions and the normal litigation things like motions to dismiss, trials that require more work in terms of time spent working on them in preparation, and generally, do need a more extensive written ruling to work forward from.

That’s the main big benchmark in terms of the court that we get through quickly and courts that requires more time and written rulings. From there, it rounds out. We tend to do settlement conferences for our colleagues. We’re invited to CLE programs and presentations and things like that to present so that rounds out and I do frequently bench trials.

That’s what I was going to ask you. I know it’s the whole equitable aspect of the court as well, so bench trials but not jury trials.

We technically can do jury trials but it requires everyone to agree and that never happens.

That’s what I was going to say. I was like, “I don’t think that people generally agree.” It doesn’t happen.

Somebody is always going to want to avoid that jury trial so they’re not going to agree. Interesting and engaging, they’re a wide range of things. Often fraud but also other issues and valuations and things like that. It’s interesting to do bench trials because there are many times, I have to remind attorneys that they don’t need to convince the witness are wrong. The only person they need to convince of is me in the courtroom because there’s all too often attorneys want the witness to realize and have this moment of “No, I did that.” That’s an unexpected event that I didn’t force to the trials.

That’s a wide variety of things that you’re doing and a wide variety of areas too. That probably keeps it interesting for you.

Very much so. It does.

That’s great. You said there’s also a reappointment process, so there’s a term and if you’d like to have another term, do you reapply or they post the reappointment?

They post the reappointment. You notify the circuit that you’re interested in being reappointed by notice. By and large, most judges are reappointed without any real opposition. It’s not 100% but that’s where it is. The circuit runs that as well. They’re the ones that reach out to see if anybody has any comments or concerns or anything like that.

I’ve seen the postings both for the magistrate judge reappointments and the bankruptcy judge reappointments from the court saying, “Here’s an open comment period. If you want to say anything about this person being reappointed as a lawyer who practices in this court, let us know.” What about someone who might be much more close in their time frame to maybe possibly applying? What do you think they should consider? I think the earlier is getting more experience and making sure you have sufficient experience in bankruptcy law.

Setting aside, we’ve talked about knowing some bankruptcy law. The next thing the circuit seems to be looking for in bankruptcy judges in addition to bankruptcy knowledge is demeanor. How are you performing? Again, it’s a wide range. The big firm attorneys, they’re fine. They know what they’re doing. They’re comfortable in the courtroom. We have pro se individuals who may or may not be native English speakers, who may have family members that are translating for them.

One thing the circuit seems to be looking for in bankruptcy judges, in addition to bankruptcy knowledge, is demeanor. How are they performing?

We have picked up some programs to allow for phone translation services to assist us. In any case, they are people who are not comfortable in court. They have probably never been in a courtroom before. They don’t know what the process is because we do have some of our own lingo in terms that come out of the bankruptcy code that is not going to make sense to an individual.

A large part of it is being able to communicate broadly in terms of explaining to individuals what is happening and why in a way that’s not overwhelming but if you state it clearly enough, they’ll be able to understand what you’re saying in terms of the statement they’re being given. At the same time, getting hostile with parties, none of that is going to help in any way that the next day to be like, “How are you under that those pressure situations?”

You can have an individual and a courtroom full of people. How are you you’re going to manage that so that no one around is getting overly concerned and concerned about the billable hours they’re using here? At the same time, we don’t want this individual intimidated by the setting. Those are what I think are the real softer skills but probably the more necessary for such a wide range of individuals that will appear before you as a bankruptcy judge.

That makes a lot of sense. I think about that in the state trial judge realm too. A lot of self-represented people in certain areas of the law and making sure that people and maybe one of their only experiences with the court system except serving as a juror. You want to make sure that they feel heard. Even if they don’t get what they wanted, they feel like the process itself was fair. A lot of that comes from the judge being able to explain things in a way where they understood what was happening and being patient with them.

I will say one of my treasured memories of this position is that I’ve gotten a few thank you notes from pro se’s. Most of them did not win because they were in the wrong position but the note was, “You heard me. You gave me time to ask questions.” That was clearly very meaningful to them and it makes me proud.

First, they reached out to you to say something. You touched them and they felt that you treated them fairly.

It is what we’re all trying to do.

I can understand why you’re like, “I love having those notes. I fulfilled the role well and in a good ambassador for the system overall.” That was their experience. Even if it wasn’t the outcome they wanted, they felt fairly treated and heard. That’s great. You’ve done a good job of explaining things to me too now. I’m like, “I can see that.” I can see you’re good at breaking down the different parts of bankruptcy and what it means in different contexts. That’s something you are good at.

I hope I continue to be.

To be able to make it that clear for people, you have to do the homework and understand it quite well in order to be able to do that, usually.

Luckily, it’s what I’m doing daily so that also helps.

You have to have that set and know it well. That’s an important point about the demeanor question. Sometimes people think about the substantive part, “What work am I going to be doing? Am I a good fit for that? Do I have the substantive knowledge that might be helpful? Also for just the judicial role itself. Judges are choosing you or judges are choosing the bankruptcy judges. I would think they would have that in mind as well. They’re like, “We know this. We are judges. We understand judicial demeanor. This is something that’s important to us.”

Since they choose us, they want to make good decisions of their own. They’re given.

You come up for reappointment. How does it happen if it does that there are more positions? In other words, maybe there are no openings because everybody who’s in the opening is already being reappointed but is there an opportunity for there to be instead of five bankruptcy judges, maybe seven in a particular district? How does that happen?

It happens but it takes an act of Congress.

That’s what I was wondering. It’s like, “Who decided that?” It’s an act of Congress.

At the same time, you can reduce the number of judges without an act of Congress. In the Northern District of California, there are nine official bankruptcy judge positions. Case load is very low at the moment, frankly across the country because of for a variety of reasons. We have six judges in the Northern District of California.

The circuit has chosen not to fill three of those positions yet because of the reduced caseload but those positions remain. Whenever the circuit decides the numbers are such that they should start filling positions, they essentially have those positions banked and can start the process for applications for a judge to fill that unused judgeship.

It could expand at some point because the circuit decides it’s going to go up to the congressional allocated limit when it didn’t do that before. I liked your answer when you said, “Yes, they could but it would require an act of Congress.” I thought, “That seems unlikely.”

Around the country, there have been judgeships that were added in different places. It has to do with if the number of judgeships has gotten way out of whack.

I know that at the district and Ninth Circuit level, it’s like wow. Everybody’s already struggling under the caseload and they have been dog paddling for a while trying to get through everything, then finally some relief. It usually takes a lot of work for quite some time before that happens.

It always does in bankruptcy judgeships as well. Lots of that.

That’s great. Thank you so much for walking through the whole process and what bankruptcy judges do and all of that. I hope that people will find that helpful and that maybe folks will consider applying in their district and their circuit when an opening comes up. I appreciate your taking the time to do this.

Thank you for taking the time to speak with me. I’m delighted to be invited to be on your show. This has been fun. Frankly, I am always glad to be able to spread the word that despite what everyone thinks about bankruptcy, it’s great. It’s a wonderful field to practice in. It’s also a great bench to be a part of. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about it.

I usually have a few lightning-round closing questions, and I’ll ask you a few of them. My first question would be, which skill would you like to have but don’t?

I wish I was good at foreign languages and I am not in any way, shape, or form but I love to travel.

That would be a nice skill to have, especially when you like to travel. Who are your favorite writers?

I read a range of things. I’ve read Anthony Doerr’s second book, Cloud Cuckoo Land and he had written All The Light We Cannot See. I like his writing. I also like Emily St. John Mandel. She wrote Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel. Both of these are writers that have stories within stories and playing through time and characters, so I enjoy that.

There’s a level of complexity to them. Their writing is good too, so that’s neat. Who is your hero in real life?

It probably is my mom. She’s always been there for me and my siblings. Frankly, as she’s aged, she has made choices to move into a retirement center while she’s still in good health and mental capacity. She’s living her best life in her late 70s. It’s great to have that as someone to look up to. That’s the moment now but she certainly has looked up to over the course of my life.

That’s great. I love that there’s a sense of adventure and evolution there too in terms of, “I want to go and hang out with people and have an active, effective life.”

Indeed. That’s what’s happening to her.

That’s inspiring to keep doing that. Keep challenging yourself to have those experiences all the way through. Given the choice of anyone in the world, who would you invite as a dinner guest?

I think if George Clooney and Julia Roberts would be there, it could be the most entertaining night of my life.

That sounds like fun. That’s a good one. The last question is what is your motto if you have one?

I don’t have a motto but I do have two Post-it notes that are always in front of me on the bench. The first is, “Don’t say it,” and the second is a quote from Dr. Cornel West, “Justice is what love looks like in public.”

Those are good reminders. I like the don’t say it. I think I need that in front of my laptop or something too. Every time you’re like, “Don’t send that email. Don’t do that.” That’s a good one. Those are great Post-it notes. I appreciate you sharing them. Thank you so much once again for joining me on the show and for sharing what you love about being a bankruptcy judge.

Thank you so much for having me. I’m honored to be part of this.