Around the water cooler — Vedder Price’s task force

Each week I will highlight a different case or legal happening, and solicit your thoughts on the impact of it in the legal community.

Vedder Price announced in February the formation of its Subprime Lending and Mortgage Task Force to assist clients with investigations, lawsuits, and bankruptcy arising from the current crisis involving the contraction of the lending and mortgage markets and other structured credit markets.

Vedder Price’s Task Force includes more than 30 lawyers throughout the firm, including former federal prosecutors and attorneys who have worked with federal banking regulators, who can advise clients on the investigation of failed deals and investments, dispute resolution, and bankruptcy counseling, and, to the extent necessary, provide efficient and practical representation in high-stakes litigation.

The firm focuses its litigation, regulatory, corporate, finance, and capital markets practices on a broad range of international financial institutions and financial services companies.

The task force brings together Vedder Price lawyers from all types of practice areas who can address this issue from different perspectives, said Margo Wolf O’Donnell, a shareholder in the litigation practice area and co-chair of the task force.

The group wants to help its clients avoid litigation, if at all possible, in this area, she said. And it wants clients to be prepared and understand the issues.

“Any institution in the financial services sector may find themselves presented with an issue related to the credit crisis,” said Vivek Bhatt, a shareholder in the capital markets group and a co-chair of the task force.

The task force has a June 17 seminar planned to update the firm’s clients or potential clients about the current credit crisis and what needs to be done. The task force wants to make sure clients understand the current trends in the law, and it will discuss actual litigation that has been filed and who has been targeted in such litigation, they said.

Members of the task force are also speaking at different engagements to further promote the task force and educate people about the credit crisis.

“The principal goal of our task force is to educate clients and prospective clients on the current landscape as it relates to the credit crisis, not just in the subprime mortgage asset class, but in all asset types,” Bhatt said. “The foundation for understanding any complex issue is education. Our hope is that our clients and prospective clients can achieve such education from our diverse task force membership, in a straightforward practical manner.”

“I hope that [clients and potential clients] are able to prevent litigation, and have any questions that they have answered,” O’Donnell said.