Chapter and verse Bankruptcy lawyer helps clients chart new business beginnings
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By Tom Kirvan
s a business litigator for nearly three decades, Bob Charbonneau has heard his share of lawyer jokes. More than a few have come from some of the standard-bearers in his family, which has been heavily populated over the years by doctors and dentists, those who swear by a Hippocratic oath “to do no harm,” except perhaps when it comes to poking fun at those in the legal profession. “My dad was a dentist and he did his best to discourage me from going into the law as a career choice,” said Charbonneau,
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one of the founders of Agentis Law, a litigation and restructuring firm based in Coral Gables, Fla. “There was a notion among family members that becoming a lawyer would be a step below those in the healing professions.” And yet, after his plan to become a Navy aviator was sidetracked by a medical condition, Charbonneau decided to go against the family grain and attend law school, a decision that was validated when he gained admittance to one of the top academic institutions in the northeast. “Even though I did well in college (at the University of Florida), I was a long-shot to get in to Boston College’s law school, but surprisingly I did,” said Charbonneau. “In all honesty, I’m still amazed that I got in based on my academic record. Apparently, they saw something in me that perhaps I didn’t see in myself.” THE PRIMERUS PARADIGM
His career vision sharpened during his second year of law school when he began taking some business-related courses, a pathway that he continued to follow in his final year at B.C. where he was a writer and then associate editor of a school business publication. “I found my niche, so to speak, and after graduation was part of a boutique firm focusing on consumer debt and corporate debt matters,” he said. “We ran the gamut, representing clients in Chapter 7, Chapter 11, even Chapter 12 bankruptcy cases involving farm operations. We did a bit of everything, which you can’t do today.” But somehow, he still does at Agentis, an eight-attorney firm that Charbonneau helped found four years ago with his partners Jacqueline Calderín and Christopher Spuches.
