2025 Executive Experience Agenda

12:00–4:30 p.m.

Golf Shotgun Tournament

Separate registration is required for this event.

Location: Silverado North Golf Course

3:00–6:30 p.m.

Registration Desk Open

Location: Mansion Bar

5:00–6:30 p.m.

Informal Welcome Reception

Meet up with your fellow Executive Experience attendees and NCBA staff for happy hour.

Location: Fairway Deck

8:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.

Registration Desk Open

Location: Silverado Foyer

8:00–11:00 a.m.

Pickleball Tournament - Sponsored by Provana

Come out and join the fun! All levels of experience are welcome.

Early Beginner Play & Learn or Intermediate/Advanced Tournament options available. Separate registration is required for this event and space is limited.

Location: Pickleball Courts

11:30 a.m.–12:45 p.m.

Optional Roundtables

Roundtables are only available to creditors rights law firm attendees. There is no additional cost for these pre-event Roundtables.

Location: Sutter Home, Martini, Silverado

12:30–1:30 p.m.

Welcome Networking Lunch

Location: Fairway Deck

1:30–2:30 p.m.

Opening Session: Mindful Leadership, Maximizing Meaning at Work and in Life

As a leader are you maximizing the meaningfulness of everything you do? Put another way, is it possible to have your cake and eat it too? As a leader in an incredibly challenging area of law, being your “best” in your practice and for your team often means sacrificing your personal life. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In this Opening Session, attendees will hear from Ryan Stanley, a former industry leader who will share strategies for navigating the challenges of managing a legal collections firm—including the balance between client demands, external pressures, being the best and most self-aware leader possible—and integrating business with life.

Ryan has held roles managing legal outsourcing for Midland Credit Management, a wholly owned subsidiary of Encore Capital Group and building their internal legal department. He also was responsible for leading and integrating Asset Acceptance after Encore’s acquisition, as well as restructuring leadership, operations, and systems at Cabot Credit Management for Encore’s UK company acquisitions. Ryan left the financial services world in 2016 to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams and is now an owner of a personality patterning and leadership development company (TDFtest.com), a yoga teacher training institute (SoulOfYoga.com), and an eclectic music instrument store (SacredSoundOfTheSoul.com).

Speaker: Ryan Stanley, Entrepreneur

Location: Silverado Ballroom

2:30–3:30 p.m.

NCBA Federal Advocacy Update & A Case Study in Successful State Level Lobbying

In today’s dynamic political landscape, being proactive in creditors rights advocacy is more crucial than ever. This session will delve into the importance of federal and state-level lobbying and how it can significantly impact policy outcomes.

Attendees will learn the value of building close relationships with their elected officials, retaining local lobbyists, and how their expertise can complement government relations professionals and other trade association groups to create a powerful, collaborative grass roots force.

Key topics include:

• Proactive Advocacy Strategies: Understanding the need for a forward-thinking approach in advocacy efforts.
• State-Level Lobbying: Exploring the unique opportunities and challenges at the state level and why it matters.
• Collaborative Efforts: Best practices for fostering collaboration between elected officials, local lobbyists and organization’s in-house government relations teams.
• Case Studies: Real-world examples of successful federal and state-level lobbying efforts and the collaborative strategies that made them possible.

Join us to gain insights and practical tools to enhance your advocacy efforts and build stronger, more effective partnerships in the realm of creditors rights and the independence of the practice of law.

Speakers: Cliff Costa, California Advocates; Derrick Weber, Messerli & Kramer, P.A.; RFA Representatives, Rich Feuer Anderson

Location: Silverado Ballroom

3:45–5:00 p.m.

Roundtables

Roundtables are only available to creditors rights law firm attendees.

Location: Sutter Home, Martini, Silverado

5:00–6:30 p.m.

Networking Reception with Wine Tasting

K. LAZ Wine Collection will present a selection of several of the most exciting wine projects in California. Specializing in extremely small-production, highly sought-after producers, new and classic, the K. LAZ team is comprised of wine professionals with decades of experience curating the wine collections for global retailers and Forbes Five Star and Michelin-starred hotels and restaurants. They will personally guide guests through the wine in their glasses in a manner that is educational, but extremely approachable and driven by the engaging stories of the incredible vintners and winemakers that make up our California wine community.

Location: Fairway Deck

7:45–8:30 a.m.

Yoga

Please RSVP

Location: Buena Vista

8:30–9:30 a.m.

Breakfast Buffet - Sponsored by Retain by TrueML Products

Location: Fairway Deck

9:30–10:30 a.m.

From Theory to Practice: Implementing AI in Legal Settings

Conversational, generative, and robotic process automation (RPA) applications continue to evolve, but are law firms fully prepared to handle the intricacies of a technology that, while still arguably in its infancy, changes every 3-6 months?

In this session you will hear from three of your peers on how they have put conversational, generative and RPA to work in their firms. They will share how they evaluated the tools out there, the challenges they had with implementation, and, of course, successes they are seeing now.

Speakers: Heath Morgan, Martin Golden Lyons Watts Morgan PLLC; Michael Scott, Scott & Associates, PC; Jim Wolf, Stokes & Wolf PC

Moderator: Stacy Stein, Mountain Peak Law Group, P.C.

Location: Silverado Ballroom

10:30–11:00 a.m.

Networking Break

Location: Fairway Deck

11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m.

From Data to Dollars: Optimizing Placement Processes for Profit

Many of us are seeing an increase in placements; however, who at your firm is “evaluating” the nature of the placements? Do you have the correct documents? Is the format of the placement data in conformity with your back end system? How much work does your staff need to do prior to sending the MVN? Do you have all your suit documents or does the file go to the “bullpen”?

The purpose of this session is to make sure firm leadership has a true understanding of how the placement process impacts the profitability of each particular client. Equally important is working with your clients to improve the processes.

This session will share best practices to simplify and make the work more efficient via first-hand solutions from peers who have executed sound, tested data solutions. Learn from small and large firm peers that have sliced and diced this issue via some creative solutions.

Speakers: Fred Blitt, Blitt & Gaines, P.C.; Shawn Kennedy, Klima, Peters & Daly, P.A.; Dawn Marshall, Law Offices of Frederic I. Weinberg & Associates, P.C.; Paschco Montoya, TRAKAmerica

Location: Silverado Ballroom

12:15–1:30 p.m.

Roundtables and Working Lunch

Roundtables are only available to creditors rights law firm attendees.

Location: Sutter Home, Martini, Silverado

1:30–2:00 p.m.

Networking Break

Location: Fairway Deck

2:00–3:00 p.m.

Integrating Technology: Implementing Digital Communications in Creditors Rights

Law firms practicing creditors rights are increasingly adopting automation and technological processes, which can now include email and text messaging platforms as well as cloud-based legal practice management software and web-based programs. While digital communications serve to make practices more efficient and cost-effective, implementation and integration concerns abound. From email to text messages, and phone systems, upgrades and changes open the door to further considerations such as: Use of the cloud, call recording, call metrics, email and chat integration, web payments, and lastly, whether to manage these applications using internal or external resources.

Email and text messages, for example, raise several questions – What types of email or text messages can and should creditors rights firms be sending? What are the legal considerations? What technologies are out there to help firms transform communications while keeping compliance safeguards in place?

This session, offered exclusively for Executive Experience attendees, will uncover best practices related to the use of digital communications with a lens focused singularly on the creditors rights space.

Speakers: Ellie Tami, Gordon, Aylworth & Tami, P.C.

Moderator: Michael Stillman, Stillman Law Office

Location: Silverado Ballroom

3:00–4:30 p.m.

Optional Workshop: Succession Planning ---it doesn’t start when you are ready to retire

You spent your working life thoughtfully building a profitable practice. How you exit is just as important as how you entered. Questions abound: What should your 1-, or 3-, or 5-year exit plan look like? Do you have successors?

Daniel Struna from Atticus is back this year to host a workshop to help you develop a strategy for a well-planned, successful exit. From preparing your firm for transitions and how to add value along the way, to setting expectations for the highest valuation and weighing your options, this workshop will help your firm plan for a successful transition and you will leave with actionable insights.

Facilitator: Daniel Struna, Atticus

Location: Silverado Ballroom

3:00–5:30 p.m.

Optional Activities

7:00–9:00 p.m.

Reception and Dinner - Sponsored by Equifax | The Work Number

Location: Mansion Gardens

7:15–8:00 a.m.

Yoga

Please RSVP

Location: Buena Vista

8:00–8:30 a.m.

Breakfast Buffet

Location: Fairway Deck

8:30–9:45 a.m.

Roundtables

Roundtables are only available to creditors rights law firm attendees.

Location: Sutter Home, Martini, Silverado

9:45–11:00 a.m.

Closing Session – Forecasting the Future: Economic Trends and Their Impact on Creditors Rights

Back by popular demand is the penultimate Executive Experience session examining the state of the industry. This year’s closing session will provide attendees with an economic recap of Q1 2025, and not just a general economic forecast, but one that incorporates specific applications to firms practicing creditors rights. The forecast for 2025 will include delinquency and charge-off rates for all categories of consumer debt which is directly related to overall volume of charge-off debt and the volumes of files that could make their way to member law firms.

Led by Dan Simmons, Senior Director of Consulting – Financial Services at TransUnion, this year’s State of the Industry session is more than just a data dump. Dan will review the trends TransUnion sees in the market and their potential implications for the firms servicing consumer credit.

Speaker: Dan Simmons, TransUnion

Location: Silverado Ballroom