McAfee & Taft's newly formed Business Restructuring and Workout Group, created to help guide business clients through the current tough economy, was spotlighted by The Journal Record. 
Firm attorneys Keith McFall and Chris Coleman were interviewed for the article.
Coleman told The Journal Record that he and McFall started talking last fall about the state of the economy and what the law firm could do to help clients weather the downturn. The first step involved identifying pecific attorneys within the firm with the necessary expertise and then putting them together.
McFall said the firm took a multi-disciplinary approach and formed a task force to focus on what they perceived the problems were going to be.
"We also broke it down per industry, and identified four or five industries that we knew would be immediately impacted by it," McFall told The Journal Record.
McFall said addressing the wide-ranging problems that can surface requires an equally broad practice approach, from employment law to taxes to mergers and acquisitions to the duties of corporate officers and directors. Both attorneys said there has been a shift in the law in recent years to find more responsibility for officers, as well as directors.
Coleman told The Journal Record that the liquidity issue is causing problems for many industries and companies, affecting their ability to borrow. That makes it more important than ever for businesses to start the process of talking with their lenders and identifying any problems as early as possible, he said.
Coleman said it may be even more important in the current economic situation “to think much further out than people did in the late ‘80s or ‘90s.”
“I think that the impact of the credit crisis is a lot different this time around,” he said. “Oklahoma was significantly impacted initially in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s. That really hasn’t been the case so far.”
McFall told The Journal Record that businesses should keep an eye on their lines of credit and availability of credit, as well as monitoring their vendors, “wherever your money comes from, whoever is paying you to provide either services or products.” He said the latter means being aware of the bankruptcy potential of people or businesses that provide clients with income.
You can read the entire article here.