Bankruptcy and Restructuring Cold-Start Interview

Bankruptcy and Restructuring Cold-Start Interview

Purpose

Conduct a structured, staged interview with a bankruptcy and restructuring practice group — led by a supervising attorney or authorized designee — to gather the information required to populate practice-profiles/bankruptcy-restructuring.md. The skill walks through all eight profile fields in sequence, records every answer, and assembles a filled draft of the profile for the practice group's review and approval. It produces draft legal work product for attorney review — not legal advice and not a final configuration.

Use When

• A team is adopting AgentCounsel and needs to configure practice-profiles/bankruptcy-restructuring.md for the first time.
• A bankruptcy and restructuring practice group is being onboarded to the library and no current profile exists.
• The library is being stood up for the first time and the bankruptcy and restructuring area is included in scope.
• A practice group wishes to revisit or rebuild its profile from scratch rather than make incremental updates.

Required Inputs

• A knowledgeable person from the bankruptcy and restructuring practice group — a supervising attorney or an authorized designee — who can answer questions about the group's jurisdiction, positions, escalation rules, and review requirements.
• Any existing playbooks, templates, source-of-truth documents, or standard-form documents the group already uses, so they can be referenced or cited in the profile.

Do Not Use When

• The group is actively working a live bankruptcy and restructuring matter. This skill configures the library; it does not support an open matter.
• A practice-profiles/bankruptcy-restructuring.md already exists and is current. In that case this is a refresh, not a cold start — though the skill may still be used to rebuild the profile deliberately.
• No authorized person is available to answer. Do not complete the interview with guessed or inferred answers; record all gaps as [CONFIRM: ...] placeholders.
• The purpose is to handle a specific bankruptcy and restructuring matter (use the appropriate matter-level skill for that task).

Legal Safety Rules

• Produce draft legal work product for attorney review. This is not legal advice.
• Never guess or infer an answer to any interview question. If the interviewee cannot answer a question, record [CONFIRM: answer required from practice group] and move on.
• The filled profile is a draft. It must be reviewed and explicitly approved by the supervising attorney or practice group before it governs any AgentCounsel work product.
• Do not invent standard positions, clause preferences, escalation thresholds, or review rules. Record only what the interviewee provides.
• Do not include client-specific facts, client names, matter identifiers, or privileged details in the profile. The profile is a reusable group-level configuration, not a matter record.
• Do not state or imply that any threshold, position, or rule in the profile satisfies a legal requirement under any jurisdiction. Jurisdiction-specific legal obligations are for the attorney to verify.
• Flag every item the interviewee defers or leaves open with a visible [CONFIRM: ...] placeholder so the reviewer can see exactly what is unresolved.

Workflow

Stage 1 — Jurisdictions

Ask the interviewee:

• In which bankruptcy courts (federal districts, divisions) does the group practice most frequently?
• Does the group regularly engage with cross-border restructurings (Chapter 15, CCAA, UK schemes, others), and which regimes drive most of that work?
• Does the group handle state-law restructuring tools — assignments for the benefit of creditors, receiverships — and in which jurisdictions?
• Are there sector-specific bankruptcy regimes (healthcare, financial institution, municipal Chapter 9) the group regularly engages with?
• Are there jurisdictions or sectors the group treats as out of scope, requiring specialist outside counsel?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: jurisdiction not yet specified].

Stage 2 — Client and Team Context

Ask the interviewee:

• Does the group represent primarily debtors, creditors (secured / unsecured / trade / equity / bondholder), committees, plan sponsors, or a mix?
• What types of bankruptcy and restructuring matters does the group handle most frequently — pre-petition advisory, Chapter 11 / 7 / 15 cases, out-of-court restructurings, distressed-asset acquisitions, plan negotiation, litigation within bankruptcy?
• How is the team structured — partners, associates, financial-restructuring specialists, claims-handling paralegals?
• How does the group coordinate with financial advisors, investment bankers, claims agents, and trustees?
• Are there client categories — first-lien holders, DIP lenders, equity sponsors, indenture trustees — that require special handling?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: client/team context not yet specified].

Stage 3 — Escalation Thresholds

Ask the interviewee:

• Which matters automatically require escalation — petition filing, first-day motions, DIP / cash-collateral, plan negotiation, section 363 sale, preference / fraudulent transfer, substantive consolidation, cross-border filing?
• Are there transaction-value or claim-amount thresholds that trigger escalation?
• When does an avoidance-action analysis (preference, fraudulent transfer, equitable subordination, recharacterization) require partner-level involvement?
• Which engagement types — committee representation, professional retention, fee-application work — require attorney review regardless of size?
• Who is the designated escalation contact for bankruptcy matters, and what is the expected turnaround?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: escalation threshold not yet specified].

Stage 4 — Preferred Output Style

Ask the interviewee:

• Should bankruptcy work product default to memo format, deadline-tracker format, claim-analysis format, or pleading-draft format?
• What level of detail does the practice group expect — executive summary, full citation-supported analysis, both layered?
• Are there house style rules for citation format, deadline flagging, or claim categorization in bankruptcy work product?
• Does the group produce closing-checklist drafts, first-day-motion summaries, or claim-analysis dashboards in standard formats?
• Are there particular deliverable types — first-day declarations, disclosure statements, plans of reorganization — for which the group has mandatory format requirements?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: output style preference not yet specified].

Stage 5 — Source-of-Truth Documents

Ask the interviewee:

• What is the group's authoritative bankruptcy-precedent library (first-day motions, plans, disclosure statements), and where is it stored?
• Is there a deadline-tracker spreadsheet or system for bankruptcy cases, and how is it kept current?
• What document governs the group's claim-analysis framework — categories, evidentiary standards, treatment recommendations?
• Are there sample DIP / cash-collateral / 363-sale motion libraries the group treats as authoritative?
• Does the group maintain a court-specific reference (local rules, judge preferences, district customs) for the bankruptcy courts where it appears?

Record answers and document names. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: source document not yet identified].

Stage 6 — Standard Positions and Playbooks

Ask the interviewee:

• What is the group's default cash-collateral / DIP posture — common protections demanded, common objections raised?
• What is the group's default DIP-lender-protection framework — adequate protection, replacement liens, super-priority, carve-outs?
• What is the group's default preference-defense framework — analyzing ordinary-course-of-business, new value, and contemporaneous-exchange defenses?
• What is the group's default substantive-consolidation posture?
• What is the group's default approach to plan-feasibility analysis and confirmation?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: standard position not yet specified].

Stage 7 — Attorney Review Requirements

Ask the interviewee:

• At what stage does attorney review of bankruptcy work product become mandatory — pre-petition advisory, filing stage, first-day motion stage, plan / disclosure-statement stage, distribution stage?
• Are there work-product types for which attorney review is always required regardless of size — any petition, any first-day motion, any plan, any preference complaint, any 363 motion?
• What is the designated reviewer's role — handling attorney, supervising bankruptcy partner, specialty partner for cross-border or sector matters?
• What is the expected turnaround for standard bankruptcy review, and how are urgent reviews (first-day filings, emergency motions) handled?
• Is there a formal sign-off step before any court filing or distribution event?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: review requirement not yet specified].

Stage 8 — Prohibited Assumptions

Ask the interviewee:

• Are there facts agents must never assume without explicit confirmation — that a deadline applies, that a claim is valid, that a transfer is non-preferential, that automatic stay protects, that an order has been entered?
• Are there bankruptcy-specific risks — fraudulent-transfer, preference, equitable subordination, judicial-estoppel, stay-violation, fee-objection — where an agent must stop and escalate rather than reason through independently?
• Are there matter types where agents must never proceed beyond intake without direct attorney involvement — committee work, cross-border filings, sector-specific bankruptcies (healthcare, financial institution)?
• Are there prior incidents — adverse rulings, sanctions, professional-conduct findings — that should be encoded as explicit prohibitions for agents working on bankruptcy matters?

Record answers. Mark any unanswered item [CONFIRM: prohibited assumption not yet specified].

Stage 9 — Assemble the Draft Profile

Compile all answers into a filled draft of practice-profiles/bankruptcy-restructuring.md, populating each of the eight profile sections. For every item that was not answered, insert a visible [CONFIRM: ...] placeholder with enough context for the reviewer to understand what needs to be supplied. Append a list of all open placeholders so the reviewing attorney can see at a glance what remains unresolved.

Output Format

Deliver:

1. Filled draft of practice-profiles/bankruptcy-restructuring.md — all eight sections populated with answers from the interview. Every unanswered item is a visible [CONFIRM: ...] placeholder.
2. Open-items list — an explicit enumeration of every placeholder inserted, with the stage and question it corresponds to, so the reviewing attorney can resolve them efficiently.

Label the entire output: Draft legal work product for attorney review. Not legal advice. This profile draft must be reviewed and approved by the supervising attorney or practice group before it is relied upon.

Attorney Verification Checklist

• All eight profile sections have been reviewed by a supervising attorney or authorized practice-group representative.
• Court coverage and judge-specific local-rule references are accurately recorded.
• Deadline-tracker reference is current and maintenance owner is named — every deadline in a related deliverable must be marked [deadline verification required].
• Cash-collateral / DIP / preference-defense defaults reflect the group's current considered practice.
• Cross-border restructuring posture is current [Verify current law].
• Conflicts and retention frameworks reflect applicable professional-conduct rules [ATTORNEY TO CONFIRM].
• No client-specific facts, matter identifiers, or privileged details appear in the profile.
• All [CONFIRM: ...] placeholders have been resolved or explicitly accepted as pending.
• The approved profile has been saved to practice-profiles/bankruptcy-restructuring.md and its effective date recorded.
• A process for periodic profile review and update has been identified.