Bankruptcy Law - 1

One of the responsibilities as a paralegal is to conduct research. There is a list of basic and useful resources for practitioners and law students to utilize in researching a bankruptcy. The primary sources are Statues, Rules and Cases. The secondary Sources are Bankruptcy Treatises, Internet Sources and Research Databases also known as Bankruptcy Reporter Systems. All these resources are relevant to explain the process in which each is needed to research bankruptcy issues. A statute is a codification of a law passed by legislature enactment and approved and signed into law by the executive branch of the government. These statues serve as source for answering all bankruptcy questions in the Bankruptcy Code itself by plainly finding the right Code section. The Bankruptcy Code defines the rules that collect and distribute the assets to creditors in a bankruptcy proceeding. The Code is well indexed, to start researching any bankruptcy issue. Careful reading, analysis and interpretation are the most important instruments to carry out an effective research. At the end of each code section, there is “Historical and Revision Notes” that are helpful in explaining the meaning of a particular provision and also a valuable secondary source to locate answers to bankruptcy questions. The two primary sources in the law library for the U.S. Code in print are United States Code Annotated (USCA) which was published by Thomson West and United States Code Services (USCS) which was published by LexisNexis. Both the USCA and USCS provide and include annotations of cases and articles. The online Statues widely used are in the Cornell University Law School, Lll/Legal Information Institute. Rules of the court are rules created by the highest court that govern court proceedings. Cornell University Law School, LII provides a link to information about the Interim Rules and Official Forms for the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005. These Rules of Practice

References: 1. Basic Bankruptcy Law for Paralegals, Custom Edition Published by Pearson Learning Solutions By David L. Buchbinder 2. www.law.asu.edu