The seminar had an engaged, if light, turnout, and I was really impressed with the level of knowledge demonstrated by some of the questions asked. These legal clinics - which are completely free of charge, by the way - are designed to help the public understand critical areas of the law, and give them a better foundation in the subject so that they can better make their own legal choices.

If you’re in the Grand Strand area, or don’t mind driving there, I’ll be repeating the “performance” at the North Myrtle Beach library on 2nd Ave. North, just one stoplight north of Main Street, on Thursday, September 25, 2008, at 6:30 PM. The program lasts an hour and a half, and will include some time for a question & answer session, too. This one, like the last, is free of charge to the public, and it’s a great way to get some of your questions answered in person by a real live bankruptcy lawyer.

Fair warning, though: I’m pretty passionate about what I do, and have been told I get very “animated” when I get into certain topics, like restrictions on collection efforts for instance!

Here’s the backstory on Derrick Todd Lee, aka “The Baton Rouge Serial Killer” (I guess the acronymic and descriptive monikers well was running dry?).

On one of the bankruptcy law listservs I subscribe, one of our Louisiana colleagues mentioned that the convicted killer’s chapter 7 trustee this week filed what we call an “AP” — an “adversarial proceeding”– to revoke Lee’s discharge, and another AP claiming rights to the “story” of how the killer committed the crimes.

I think this is overreaching. We may morally and philosophically abhor allowing a convicted murderer to profit from his story — and frankly, I do (that’s the reasoning behind so-called “Son of Sam” laws that prohibit such activities and/or turn the profits over to victim restitution funds or other interests). But no story’s been written — so any funds from the sale of such a story have to be postpetition. If that’s the case, then they’re not part of the bankruptcy estate. And if that’s true, then the trustee has no right to those funds.

All that said, I haven’t read the complaints yet — so this is based purely on secondhand information and my own idle musings on a Tuesday morning. Still, one can’t deny that it’s a fascinating issue and that doesn’t always happen in Bankruptcy Law-land!