From: Rock Hill, South Carolina

Our distinguished July Member of the Month, L. Showell Blades, is a sole practitioner in Rock Hill, SC serving the Rock Hill and Charlotte, NC areas.  A graduate of the University of South Carolina School of Law (J.D. 1986) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (B.S. 1982), Showell began his career in eastern North Carolina as the associate of a two partner practice and filed his first bankruptcy, a chapter 13, shortly after beginning his practice - using a manual and handtyped forms.

In February, 1989 he moved to Rock Hill, SC and worked as the associate for Ryan Hovis, a Chapter 7 trustee who also had an active debtor practice. It was through that experience that he moved from a general practice into becoming purely a debtor’s attorney. When Ryan gave him two weeks’ notice that he was leaving to be a full-time trustee right before Christmas in 1991 - which left Showell as the only bankruptcy lawyer in the firm and as THE satellite office of a Columbia, SC firm - Showell decided he could operate his own debtor firm.

A Member since 2005, Showell joined NACBA in order to attend the Chicago Members-Only Workshop in the lead-up to the implementation of BAPCPA. Since then he has been to the NACBA conventions in Philadelphia and New Orleans.  Showell has also become involved in NACBA’s lobbying efforts: “Shamefully, and maybe like many debtors’ attorneys, I did nothing to influence the passage of BAPCPA. To that end, I attended the lobbying event NACBA held in Washington DC this year, where we trained with our lobbyist and spent a day lobbying the House and Senate.” 

Showell was extremely involved in the successful effort to increase SC’s homestead exemption.  In his capacity as South Carolina’s NACBA State Chair, he has joined forces again with the same groups to draft a bill to increase the other state exemptions. Working with NACBA members Sheryl Schelin, who set up a google listserve, and Dana Wilkinson, they drafted a proposed bill, which they “debated” on their google listserve and were able to submit it through the Appelseed Legal Justice Center for legislative consideration. “We hope it will pass by Winter although it is way too early to tell!” One of Showell’s goals as state chair has been to increase membership and organize the Debtor’s bar in South Carolina under the mantle of NACBA.

Showell recently attended member Max Gardner’s Boot Camp “to see if I could do anything about the rise of creditors’ blatant abuse and hubris after BAPCPA” and to better serve his clients. Thus, he hopes to expand his practice into handling more discharge violation, stay violation, and loan servicing violation litigation. Showell is currently re-tooling his office to be paperless in response to the deluge of paper post-BAPCPA. In the last 8 months he has launched a website at www.ShowellBlades.com with around 100 pages of information designed to give information to the public about bankruptcy.