Paul M. Bauch

Paul counsels entrepreneurs and executives through complex commercial litigation, business restructurings and workouts outside of bankruptcy, and reorganizations and liquidations in bankruptcy. His work regularly includes property and assets sales, negotiating loan workouts, and protecting his clients’ assets from improper seizure or overreaching. While Paul has represented lenders and landlords, he is especially formidable through his insights and knowledge of asset protection and debtor representation.

Paul has handled several Small Business Subchapter V cases within Chapter 11 reorganizations over the years after successfully completing some of the earliest Subchapter V cases in the Northern District of Illinois when Subchapter V was adopted.

In the post-2008 Recession and financial turmoil, Paul represented two real estate developers and through dozens of lawsuits in state court and several bankruptcy filings, Paul and the Bauch & Michaels firm successfully worked with numerous banks and other parties to complete construction of a number of real property developments and condominium projects and discharged more than $1 billion in debt owed by the clients.

Prior to co-founding Bauch & Michaels in 2000, Paul was a partner at a Chicago AmLaw 100 law firm where he focused on Bankruptcy and Business Reorganization. Paul’s personality offsets the circumstances for most of his clients as he demonstrates patience, imagination, and resourcefulness with an understanding of human strife. He has often found solutions where others missed the path forward. He was thinking outside the box decades before it became fashionable to do so.

Paul’s legal skills are their best in the courtroom at trial when he is conducting cross-examination of a witness or explaining to a judge the circumstances giving rise to the current situation. He is one of those rare persons who can reduce a complex array of ideas into a simple, succinct articulation and then provide the court with a solution to the problem.

Outside of his law practice, Paul’s passion is running marathons across the world. He has run marathons in Chicago, Boston, New York, Paris, Berlin, London, Mexico City, Tokyo, Nice, Copenhagen, Los Angeles, Miami, and Porto. He has led the Big Shoulders race team in several Chicago marathons raising money for the Big Shoulders Foundation serving inner city children in Catholic schools. He has served on the Chairman’s Advisory Fund for Big Shoulders and is an active member of the East Lakeview Neighbors and Lakeview Citizens Council.

Paul received his Bachelor of Science in Public Administration in 1980 from Western Michigan University in 1980 and his J.D. from the University of Miami School of Law in 1983. He is admitted to practice in the State of Illinois, Florida and the District of Columbia and in federal courts in Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, the District of Columbia and Texas. He has litigated in the Seventh and Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.