Bankruptcy lawyer Kenneth Rannick feels the kind of empathy for his clients only life experience can provide.
As a young man, he’d done everything right: He had zero debt, good health insurance, and money in the bank. But then his carefully weaved tapestry began to unravel.
First, he became ill – very ill – with ulcerative colitis, an autoimmune disease in which the body attacks its own colon. His illness forced him to quit working and live off of his savings – a precarious situation for any husband, let alone a young one.
In time, Rannick’s colon had to come out. While he was in the hospital, his health insurance company went into receivership, making his insurance worthless. “I had six weeks of hospitalization and a complex eight hour surgery, and no way to pay for them. I experienced firsthand the expectancy of huge bills, bad health, a bad prognosis, and no hope of recovery,” wrote Rannick in a bio available on his website (www.bankruptcychattanooga.com).
Fortunately, Rannick retroactively qualified for Medi-Cal, California’s version of TennCare, which covered his bills.
“Had it not been for Medi-Cal, I would have had to file Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Because of this, I understand clients. I understand the stress of not knowing how bills will be paid,” he wrote.
“Broken finances are largely a symptom of other things going on in a person’s life,” Rannick says today in his Brainerd Road office. “They’re ill, so they can’t work; they were working, but they got laid off. And when that disruption happens, they have financial issues.”
Rannick didn’t immediately gravitate to the law. His first choice was medicine, as his father was a surgeon and his mother was a registered nurse. But he hated the rote memorization required in his pre-med classes. He stuck with pre-med for three years anyway, first at a college in his hometown of Johnson City, Tenn., and then at Long Beach State in California, where he had moved to be with his first wife.
While there, he took the aptitude testing that was available and discovered he was well-suited to being a lawyer. He balked at the idea, though, because popular television serials like Knots Landing and Dallas were portraying lawyers as sneaky liars, and he didn’t want to be like that. “I had an uninformed bias against the profession,” Rannick says.
He says he now knows better. “Lawyers are among the most ethical people there are. We have some of the strictest standards.”
Rannick tested different kinds of waters before becoming an attorney. After recovering from a second serious medical problem, he returned to school, taking Bible courses at Azusa Pacific College in California with an eye on entering Christian ministry. However, upon graduation, he knew he wasn’t ready for seminary.
“I had a mean streak. I have a tendency to be direct and not seem empathetic enough, even though I’m very empathetic,” he says. “I’ve mellowed in my later years, but when I came out of law school, I was obnoxious. I still have a reputation among some people for being a real son of a gun.”
With entering seminary temporarily out of the question, Rannick went to work in sales for a national contact lens company. Although he did well, he was unhappy and didn’t like the prospect of traveling. Rannick had started to reconsider seminary when another thread unexpectedly unraveled: his first wife left him.
“Being divorced was a career killer for a want-to-be-pastor in a conservative church,” he wrote in his bio. “[But] I came to realize lawyers were in fact quite honest, and that my impressions from TV were not based on fact.”
Remembering his aptitude tests at Long Beach, Rannick decided to go to law school. He chose Memphis State (now the University of Memphis) because it was the least expensive fully accredited school in the country.
Rannick’s goal was to become a trial lawyer in Chattanooga, so he took advantage of the complete law school experience – living frugally on campus, working part time, making excellent grades, and joining the staff of the Law Review and the board of Moot Court. His efforts landed him a job in Chattanooga with Shumaker & Thompson.
As a new trial lawyer, Rannick tried cases in General Sessions Court. While he enjoyed the trials, he loathed doing collections. “I hated foreclosing on houses, evicting tenants from their homes or businesses, and chasing down debtors,” he wrote in his bio. “Just seven years earlier, I had been sick, and had medical bills, and didn’t know how I was going to make ends meet. Now, my clients were asking me not to show mercy but to seek justice!”
While Rannick says he respects his colleagues who collect debts, saying they perform an important service, he decided to move to the other side of the law, and in 1988, began doing Chapter 13 and Chapter 7 bankruptcy debtor work.
Rannick is now at peace with his work. “By and large, I love my clients. They are typically hardworking but unfortunate. They are my friends; they are people in my church; they are people like you and me,” his bio reads.
Rannick is also at peace with himself. He’s been married to his second wife, Aleta, for 28 years. Together, they have three children, including a son and a daughter who are grown and in Christian ministry and a son who’s attending Silverdale Baptist Academy. Also, as a member of Woodland Park Baptist Church, Rannick has been able to teach a men’s Bible study and children’s church. He might not be a minister, but he still ministers.
“I’d rather teach children than men,” he says. “If you teach a man, you affect him for 30 years; if you teach a child, you affect him for 75 years.”
Rannick also believe he minsters to the broken people who enter through the doors of his office. There’s even a box of tissues at the ready in the conference room in which he’s sitting. “I understand the nuances of the law and how they apply to a person’s situation,” he says. “But more than that, there’s nothing like sitting with a man or woman who’s broken or hurting, and being able to help them.”