James Lawniczak

Practice Areas

Business Restructuring and Insolvency

Commercial Lending

Corporate and Finance

Career

Jim Lawniczak has more than 40 years of experience representing clients in complex corporate reorganizations and bankruptcy and creditors’ rights, as well as commercial business and finance matters.

Jim represents secured and unsecured creditors, debtors, liquidators, receivers and unsecured creditors’ committees in all aspects of corporate and insurance insolvency and workout proceedings. His practice also encompasses working with domestic and international clients on transactional matters in the commercial business and finance arena.

Jim has successfully handled complex bankruptcies and reorganizations for private and public companies in the steel, manufacturing and retail industries. His work includes serving as debtors’ counsel in the successful reorganization of the Wheeling Pittsburgh Steel Corporation, a company that restructured hundreds of millions of dollars of debt in Chapter 11.

Jim also facilitated the 363 sales of Republic Storage Systems Company and Concord Steel Inc.; his guidance enabled them to achieve their goal of selling their businesses, while preserving critical assets and jobs.

Jim is a contributing author to the 16th Edition of Collier on Bankruptcy – the leading national treatise on bankruptcy law.

Jim also has written the authoritative, comprehensive treatise, Collier Lending Institutions and the Bankruptcy Code (2d. ed.), published by LexisNexis. It covers all aspects of loan origination, workouts and bankruptcy from the perspective of lending institutions. The Collier series has long been recognized as the leading legal authority in the U.S. on bankruptcy and related topics impacting entities in the U.S. and globally.

Jim has authored bankruptcy and related chapters of Lexis’s Asset Based Financing, Business Organizations with Tax Planning (including chapter 154 on alter ego claims), and Franchising treatise. He is the Editor-in-Chief of LexisNexis Debtor-Creditor Law treatise.

Jim was a featured online contributor to the “LexisNexis Expert Commentaries” series, providing insight on significant, high-profile bankruptcy cases, and he has been a featured panelist in Financier Worldwide. He also has published multiple articles in professional and legal journals, and he frequently lectures on bankruptcy and commercial finance issues at professional seminars and conferences.

He is a former trustee and program committee chairman of the Northern Ohio Chapter of the Turnaround Management Association.

Jim is a member of the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association, having served as a trustee from 2005-2009. He is a member of its Bankruptcy and Commercial Law Section (chairperson 2003-2004) and served as chair of its Lawyer-Client Fee Dispute Resolution Committee (2011-2012). He also served as chair (2009-2010) of the Association’s 3R Committee, which directs an award-winning educational program for high school students. He served (2007-2016) as legal adviser to Shaw High School’s mock trial team, which repeatedly advanced to the state tournament in those years.

He was a long-time trustee (treasurer 2004-2007) of the Fairmount Center for the Arts.

Jim was a partner with the Chicago firm of Mayer, Brown & Platt in its bankruptcy and restructuring group prior to joining Calfee as a partner in 1988.

Professional Memberships

Turnaround Management Association – Northern Ohio Chapter, Former Trustee and Program Committee Chair

Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association, Member and Former Trustee (2005-2009)

Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association's Bankruptcy and Commercial Law Section, Member and Former Chair (2003-2004)

Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association's Lawyer-Client Fee Dispute Resolution Committee, Former Chair (2011-2012)

Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association's 3Rs Committee, which directs an award-winning educational program for high school students, Former Chair (2009-2010)

Experience

Calfee developed a strategy and playbook for responding to customer distress and potential insolvency for a publicly traded, Fortune 1000, global manufacturing client’s in-house counsel to develop materials to assist in-house credit personnel in responding to non-performing customers. The client regularly engages Calfee to assist in responding to these anticipated customer insolvency issues as they arise across the country.

Calfee serves as general corporate counsel to a privately owned company in the domestic and international retail and food service industries, including providing general representation as a creditor or contract party in bankruptcy cases and other insolvency matters throughout the country when necessary (e.g., defending preference cases, executory contract and claims issues). In the past year, we assisted the client in pursuing claims in a Chapter 11 case, including the assertion of a secured offset claim and responding to liquidating the trustee’s attempt to withhold distributions. This is a national engagement with respect to bankruptcy and insolvency matters throughout the United States.

Expert in these Jurisdictions

Ohio

Education