Naomi Reyes-Ashford

I have filed roughly 2,400 consumer bankruptcy cases since 2006. Chapter 7 and Chapter 13, nothing else.

That is a deliberate choice. Bankruptcy is a procedural practice where the details compound, and I would rather do one thing at a level most general practices cannot reach than offer six things adequately.

Credentials

• Certified Specialist in Bankruptcy Law, State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization
• Admitted to the California Bar, 2006
• Admitted to the United States District Court, Central District of California
• Member, Central District Consumer Bankruptcy Attorney Association
• Member, Los Angeles County Bar Association and Beverly Hills Bar Association

How I work

I take the consultation myself. Not an intake coordinator, not a paralegal who books you for a second meeting with a lawyer. If you call and I am in a 341, you will hear back that day.

I will also tell you when not to file. Roughly one in seven people who consult with me should not be filing bankruptcy at all, and they leave knowing that without having paid for the privilege.

Why bankruptcy

I started in creditor-side collections work for two years and hated it. The mechanics were interesting and the object of them was not. The debtor side does the same procedural work in service of somebody who has usually had a hard few years and been treated badly by people with scripts.

Nineteen years later I still think the automatic stay is the most humane provision in American commercial law. It is the one moment where the machinery stops because a person asked it to.

Outside the practice

I teach a financial literacy session twice a year at a community college in the Valley, mostly to people who will never need a bankruptcy attorney and should not. I run, slowly, and I am on my third attempt at keeping bonsai alive, which colleagues find funnier than it is.