BANKRUPTCY’S TOP GUN

Jay Ungerman, forty-nine, entered the rather arcane field of bankruptcy law straight out of law school, when it wasn’t quite so fashionable. “I became a bankruptcy lawyer because I was conceived by a bankruptey lawyer,” he says. His father, Meyer Uitgerman, and William Madden Hill formed the city’s leading bankruptcy firm, Ungerman Hill and Ungerman.

“But until (he Iast Tew years. there probably weren’t a half-dozen bankrrupt. cy firms in Dalltis.” Ungerman says. “We were sort of like a little specialty shop a legal boutique, Now every major law firm in Dallas has a bankruptcy branch Ungerman doesn’t claim that lie’s the most knowledgeable lawyer in Dallas {others claim it for him). “But I probably understand it more than most, who deal with it in textbook fashion.” he says. “I’ve been around it for forty years. I went to work up here as an office boy at the age of nine.”

In the past. Ungerman Hill and Ungerman has tended to represent the creditor. “Niw that’s changed. We represent both sides.” he says. “And sometimes we’ll find ourselves in a conflict of interest situation and then must resign from the case and [sigh] relinquish the fee.”

says that one of the reason so many people Dallas are seeking the bankruptey alternative is that “now there is no stigma attached to it. It didn’t used to be that way,”