An independent read on a file that has stopped behaving

• Payment has stopped and the chain has fragmented. Multiple parties, partial records, and nobody holding the whole chronology.
• A lender has asked for a reporting package that cannot be produced. The data exists — in a bookkeeping system, four email threads, and someone’s recollection of a phone call — but not in a form a third party can test.
• The record will not survive scrutiny. By a credit committee, an auditor, an examiner, or a court.
• Control of the file has drifted. Decisions are being made by people without the authority to make them, and nobody is recording who decided what.
• An appointment has produced boxes rather than records. The estate formally holds its books and records and has nothing it can use.

If none of these describes your matter, the call is unlikely to be worth your time, and we will tell you so on it.

In a deteriorating matter, nearly every number reaching a decision-maker was produced by a party with an interest in how it is read. That information gets discounted — by credit committees, by examiners, and by courts — regardless of whether it is accurate.

AEEA is engaged to hold the file itself. One chronology. One reporting cadence. One version of the record that lenders, counsel, owners and courts can all work from.

We run a conflicts check before we scope any engagement, including on the counterparty and the lender. Independence that is asserted rather than checked is not independence, and in a matter that may end in front of a court it is worse than useless — it is an exhibit.

We decline matters where the record was deliberately corrupted, where we have touched the other side, where what is wanted is advocacy or legal advice, and where the timing has passed and reconstruction would not reach a standard worth paying for.

1. 1
   Within one business day We confirm receipt and run a conflicts check against the parties you have named. If there is a conflict, we tell you immediately and the process stops there.
2. 2
   The call — 30 minutes, no cost You describe the matter. We ask what we need to ask. You get a straight view on whether this is a file that can be helped and what the first two weeks would involve.
3. 3
   If it is a fit A scoped diagnostic, with a fixed fee agreed in advance, delivers a position analysis. Engagements are typically initiated through paid diagnostic work.
4. 4
   If it is not We say so on the call, and where we can, we tell you who or what would be more useful. That is a real outcome and it happens regularly.

Nothing you send through this form is treated as confidential legal information, and no engagement exists until it is agreed in writing. If you do not have counsel on a matter that needs it, that is the more urgent call.