Be Prepared: Best Practices for Intake

Paige M. Vaillancourt is an associate at Rescia Law, P.C. in Enfield, Conn., and is part of the firm’s bankruptcy and insolvency practice. She is a Connecticut Bar Association Presidential Fellow for the 2020-22 term.

Ms. Vaillancourt was awarded the 2019 Rising Star Award by the Commercial Law & Bankruptcy Section of the Connecticut Bar Association, and she is the Commercial Law & Bankruptcy Executive Committee co-chair of the Connecticut Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Section, for which she was awarded the 2019-20 Rookie of the Year Award. She is admitted to the bars for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the State of Connecticut, as well as the U.S. District Courts for the Districts of Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Ms. Vaillancourt is a member of the Massachusetts and Connecticut Bar Associations, the Hampden and Hampshire County Bar Associations, the International Women’s Insolvency & Restructuring Confederation’s New England and Connecticut Networks, and ABI. She received her J.D. from Western New England University School of Law in 2018, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the Western New England Law Review.

Elizabeth E. Stephens is Of Counsel with Sullivan Hill Lewin Rez & Engel and serves as managing attorney of its Las Vegas office. She practices in the area of insolvency and bankruptcy and has represented panel trustees, debtors and creditors in bankruptcy courts for more than 25 years.

Ms. Stephens has successfully litigated before the Ninth Circuit, the Ninth Circuit Bankruptcy Appellate Panel, the courts of the District of Nevada and the Supreme Court of the State of Nevada, and the State of Wisconsin. She also is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court. Previously, Ms. Stephens was an assistant state public defender for the State of Wisconsin in the Appellate Division, where she litigated hundreds of criminal appeals in the state and federal courts. She also represented consumer debtors in chapter 7 and 13 bankruptcies.

Ms. Stephens is a past co-chair of ABI’s Consumer Bankruptcy Committee and Legislation Committee, and she has authored many articles that have appeared in ABI publications. She received her B.A. in 1969 from Alverno College, her M.A.L.S. in 1971 from the University of Wisconsin and her J.D. cum laude in 1984 from Marquette University Law School, where she was a staff editor of the Marquette Law Review.

James H. Cossitt is Of Counsel with Gribble, Boles, Stewart & Witosky in Des Moines, Iowa, and maintains statewide practices in Iowa and Montana limited to bankruptcy & workouts, insolvency, reorganization, debtor/creditor law, and business and commercial litigation. Over the last 35 years, he has served as a bankruptcy attorney with the FDIC and as a chapter 7 panel trustee, a chapter 11 trustee, counsel to numerous trustees and business and consumer debtors, and as an expert witness.

Mr. Cossitt is admitted to practice in the state and federal courts in Iowa and Montana and is Board Certified by the ABC in both Business (2005) and Consumer (1995) Bankruptcy Law. He supervised the publication of the “Working Paper: Best Practices for Debtors’ Attorneys,” 64 Bus. Law 79 (2008), which was a follow-up to his involvement on another project, “Attorney liability under section 707(b)(4) of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005,” 61 Bus. Law. 697 (2006). From 2011-13, Mr. Cossitt served on the ABI Presidential Task Force on Uniform Ethics Standards for Bankruptcy Practice. He chaired ABI’s Consumer Bankruptcy Committee and served on the task force that drafted the “ABI National Ethics Task Force Report.”

A frequent speaker to professional and trade groups on bankruptcy and related topics, Mr. Cossitt has consulted with the Slovak Parliament and research institutes in Bratislava, Slovakia, as a member of USAID assistance program to draft a new bankruptcy law. He also served as an invited lecturer at a Russian Bankruptcy School, held in Ames, Iowa.

Mr. Cossitt received his B.A. with distinction in 1982 from Iowa State University and his J.D. in 1986 from the University of Iowa College of Law.