Actually, bankruptcy professionals might earn even a very rich keep if they provided a quick and decisive way to allocate losses from the failure, move Lehman assets to their most productive uses and bring relative certainty to all parties. The prospect instead of slow, chancy, and hard-fought wrangling is one major reason why the administratively assisted “speed bankruptcy” model of financial institution reorganization, seen in the Washington Mutual case, has been winning praise from knowledgeable observers (e.g. Alex Tabarrok). If speed bankruptcy seems well suited to the crisis, one reason is that conventional, protracted, lawyer-run bankruptcy seems so ill-suited. More: Roger Parloff, Fortune “Legal Pad”, American Lawyer.

Bounteous bankruptcies: Lehman Brothers is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system