When I started my career in the UCC search and filing industry, sports fans were still talking about Michael Jordan’s recent NBA playoff game, during which he scored 38 points for the Chicago Bulls while suffering from a bad case of the flu.  Many people were also talking about the recent heavyweight fight when Mike Tyson lost to Evander Holyfield after biting his ear!  For more than two decades, my career has been focused exclusively upon legal due diligence, particularly Article 9 of the UCC and searching and filing public records.   

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While my friends and family still don’t understand what kind of law I practice, and what it is exactly that I do for a living, I still find the world of legal due diligence and Article 9 as fascinating as ever!  It is both an art and a science, with constantly evolving statutes, administrative rules, filing office systems, and ever-changing industry practices.  It never gets boring…there are over 3,000 local filing offices, 51 state-level filing offices, and hundreds of different lien types filed throughout the country.

  

Developing a sound search strategy at the beginning of your deal, and analyzing search results throughout the deal, is something that sounds easy. The reality is that it is often much more complicated and time-consuming than it sounds.  After 23 years in the business, and after working through thousands of challenging filing and searching situations, I still love getting up every day and doing this!  

 

I’ve also had the great fortune during my career of working closely with the groups that built the entire industry!  I was lucky enough to have been an observer to the Uniform Law Commission Committee that actually wrote Article 9 of the UCC!  Being in the room during the drafting discussions helped me to really understand what the drafters intended, and how to read between the lines of the statutory text. 

  

I’ve also actively participated in IACA (International Association of Commercial Administrators) since 1999. IACA is the organization responsible for creating the model UCC forms, as well as drafting the model UCC Administrative Rules that control the filing and indexing of UCC filings.  Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of working with some amazing filing officers as part of the UCC Forms Committee and the UCC Administrative Rules Committee! 

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My favorite part of my job has always been getting to know you as a customer, understanding your transactions and needs, and doing everything I possibly can to help your transactions go as smoothly as possible!  At Do Diligence, LLC, we focus exclusively upon due diligence searching and filing, and would love to help you with yours!