NACBA’s October Member of the  Month and Louisiana State Chair, Bill Cherbonnier,  is a familiar face to NACBA Convention, Workshop, and Capitol Hill Day  attendees.

Technically a solo practitioner with a practice in Gretna, Lousiana,  Bill has forged a formal professional relationship with two other  attorneys to help with the volume of his work.  All of his consumer  bankruptcy cases are co-counseled with fellow-NACBA member Bowdre  Banks, and all of his tort/personal injury cases are co-counseled with  a personal injury specialist.  Between the three attorneys, they have  six full-time and four part-time employees.  Bill also has an informal  but active professional association with NACA members Steve Conley and  Garth Ridge on his private-practice FDCPA, FCRA, RESPA, and other  consumer cases.

Bill cites as his most significant legal work the formation  post-Katrina of The Collection Defense Project (“CDP”), for which he  was honored with the 2006 Distinguished Service Award from the New  Orleans Pro Bono Project.  The CDP attempts to intervene early at the  state, parish, and city court levels on behalf of consumer debtors who  are being sued by debt scavengers.  Instead of rolling over and  allowing a default judgment to be entered against the consumer, a  formal appearance is entered and discovery is propounded to determine  the validity of the debt and the legal standing to sue of the  plaintiff.  Settlement options are explored and bankruptcy alternatives  are offered if needed but only if needed.

Bill’s work, outlook, and personal philosophy have been significantly  affected by three major events in his life:

1)         For eleven years, Bill was a New Orleans Police Reserve  (i.e., unpaid) Officer.  He notes that he learned a lot that they don’t  teach you in law school or anywhere else, most significantly:  what  it’s like to be shot at, that evil really does exist, and that most  people who live in the housing projects are honorable and decent people  who lead lives of quiet desperation.

2)         In September 2001, five days before 9-11, Bill’s wife Alice  was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer.  Sixteen months later, after twelve  hospitalizations totaling over 100 days, three surgeries, twenty-plus  days of radiation, five different unsuccessful chemotherapy protocols,  and almost a million dollars in medical expenses, she passed away the  week before Christmas, leaving two daughters then aged 7 and 4.

“For  the first time in my life I found myself on the receiving end of  harassing, abusive, and sometimes vicious phone calls from collection  agencies.  I realized that the horror stories my clients had been  telling me for the past 25-plus years were not exaggerations, and the  experience changed my outlook from a consumer advocate to a consumer  crusader.”

3)         Hurricane Katrina.  Bill packed up his two daughters and  picked up his mother-in-law the day before the hurricane made landfall.  They left New Orleans with just three days of clothes because they  expected to be back within the week.  When Bill first returned two weeks later, after managing to talk his way through six different  roadblocks manned by the 101st Airborne and various out-of-state  National Guard units, he found his office almost totally destroyed and  mold covering everything that had been saturated with water.  All of  this right before the effective date of BAPCPA.  Bill considers himself  lucky, as he lived in a section of the city that suffered only minor  damage from broken tree limbs. “Katrina is and will always be for me  the poster child for the failure of government at every level -  national, state, and of course local.”

A member of NACBA for many years, Bill’s involvement with NACBA  increased dramatically after Katrina, when he worked with NACBA’s  Legislative Committee and Legislative Director Maureen Thompson to  attempt to swing the Louisiana Congressional delegation to delay BAPCPA  for hurricane-devastated areas.  “To my utter disappointment and  disgust, all of Louisiana’s senators and representatives, both Democrat  and Republican, were firmly on the side of the banking and finance  industry.  I was (and still am) totally impressed with NACBA at the  national level for its legislative efforts and the work it does to  elevate the quality of the bankruptcy bar.”

Bill currently takes consumer and bankruptcy referrals from the New  Orleans Pro Bono Project and the Loyola Law School Clinic, and he has  introduced the Collection Defense Project to the New Orleans Legal  Assistance Corporation and the Southeast Louisiana Legal Services  Group.  Bill was recently appointed one of three At-Large Members of  the Louisiana State Bar Association Legislation Committee, which  reviews and makes recommendations on all state legislation affecting  the Civil Code, the courts, and the practice of law. In his “spare  time,” Bill is secretary of the newly-formed LSBA Consumer Protection  Section, which is preparing a questionnaire on consumer issues for all  candidates for state office in the November general elections and is  also promoting a change in the state constitution to raise the  homestead exemption and provide other relief that will be of benefit in  a consumer bankruptcy.

Bill has lectured at CLE programs for over 15 years on bankruptcy  matters, and in October of this year gave a presentation at Loyola Law  School entitled “Above the Law; Legal Loansharking for Fun  and Profit”  which, as Bill puts it, “focused on the abuses of the debt buying  industry and the damage done by rubber-stamp judges who have never  encountered a Motion for Default that they wouldn’t sign.”

A great supporter of NACBA, Bill notes: “Consumer Bankruptcy has become  a genuine specialty, a field of law that the general practitioner is no  longer able to enter (and does not desire to enter). The commitment of  time and staff necessary to build a profitable bankruptcy practice,  which requires specialized knowledge, dedicated software, and a certain  volume of cases, also makes it difficult for the competent bankruptcy  practitioner to practice any other kind of law.  Now more than ever  does the individual consumer bankruptcy lawyer need a professional  association such as NACBA.”

As a  single parent, Bill is very involved with his two daughters, both of  whom are avid and accomplished swimmers and frequent attendees at NACBA  and NACA conventions.

Bill graduated from Tulane law School and was admitted  to the bar at age 23.