Louis M. Phillips is a partner at Kelly Hart & Pitre and leader of the firm's Bankruptcy & Business Reorg. practice. Mr. Phillips provides legal representation and consultation for debtors, creditors, and trustees over a broad practice area, including transaction and business structuring and restructuring, bankruptcy reorganization, and bankruptcy and commercial litigation. He also handles civil cases in state and federal courts and has handled matters before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Mr. Phillips represents debtors, debtors-in-possession, and creditors in Chapter 11 cases, borrowers and lenders in loan restructuring and workouts, and entities of all types in all practice areas of bankruptcy cases and proceedings.
Mr. Phillips serves as the permanent chair of the Annual Bankruptcy Law Seminar sponsored by the Louisiana State University Center for Continuing Professional Development, a program he developed in 1995. He has taught educational programs on bankruptcy law for state judges, and has been an Adjunct Professor of Law at LSU Law School since 1988. Phillips was formerly a contributing editor to the Norton Bankruptcy Law and Practice 2nd and is the author of numerous articles for law reviews and other periodicals. Mr. Phillips is a frequent speaker and writer for legal education seminars across the country, including the Advanced Bankruptcy Course of the State Bar of Texas, Western District of Texas Bankruptcy Bench Bar; LSU Annual Bankruptcy Law Seminar, LSU Family Law and Recent Developments in Law Jurisprudence Seminars, and seminars sponsored by such esteemed groups as Stetson University College of Law, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, Texas Tech School of Law, Norton Institutes on Bankruptcy Law, American Bankruptcy Institute, National Association of Bankruptcy Trustees, National Association of Chapter 13 Trustees, Rocky Mountain Bankruptcy Symposium Law Education Institute, 5th Circuit Bench-Bar Bankruptcy Conference, Mississippi Bankruptcy Conference, Bankruptcy Law Institute, MidSouth Commercial Law Institute, the Annual Oil & Gas Law Conference, and the American Bar Association as well as numerous federal district bar associations and those of and in the states of Louisiana, Minnesota, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, Washington and Wisconsin. Among his many other speaking engagements are lectures to the National Association of Attorneys General, Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys, and VISA International.
From 1988 - 2002, Mr. Phillips served as the Chief U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the Middle District of Louisiana. During his tenure, he authored numerous opinions of first impression of Louisiana state law and bankruptcy law, and was the author of a number of opinions that ultimately were adopted by the Fifth Circuit and other courts as the law of those courts (i.e., Matter of Mercer, 246 F.3d 391 (5th Cir.2001) involving credit card fraud cases under section 523(a)(2) and Matter of Orso, 283 F.3d 686 (5th Cir. 2002) (wherein the Court reversed the panel and prior jurisprudence concerning the Louisiana law exemption over structured settlement annuities).
Mr. Phillips presided over the first conversion to a totally electronic filing and docketing system within the Federal Courts of the United States.