Robert N. Amkraut
Principal
Robert brings over 12 years of business experience to his law practice, including managing international businesses, business start-ups, and business turnarounds. His practice focuses on bankruptcy and creditors’ rights issues, advising closely-held businesses, aerospace companies, corporate acquisitions, and on related areas of litigation. He joined Riddell Williams in 1997 and is a member of the Bankruptcy and Creditors' Rights Practice Group and the Corporate Transactions and Finance Practice Group.
Robert has represented creditors (including official creditors committees), secured lenders, debtors and fraud victims in bankruptcy and state courts, and numerous business clients in corporate and contractual matters, including transactions involving amounts in excess of $100 million. The following are representative of Robert’s work:
- Counsel to aerospace manufacturer in negotiating five related contracts for large multi-year supply agreement.
- Represent company named as one of over 100 defendants in billion dollar bankruptcy litigation.
- Represent company in using secured claim in bankruptcy to force a sale of assets and to purchase all assets of bankruptcy debtor at auction.
- Represent company appointed by bankruptcy court to manage and liquidate approximately $70 million in real estate assets.
- Represent businesses suffering financial reversals in “wind-downs” to close businesses and pay creditors without filing bankruptcy.
- Represent Official Unsecured Creditors Committee holding millions of dollars in claims against fraudulent real estate venture.
- Represent Official Unsecured Creditors Committee in high tech company bankruptcy resulting in all creditors receiving full payment on their claims, plus interest.
- Represent Official Unsecured Creditors Committee in pursuing claims of improper insider dealing and breach of fiduciary duties against debtor’s former directors and officers.
- Represent investors in start-up companies.
Education and Admissions
Robert received his undergraduate degree from the University of California at Santa Cruz, with honors, in 1979, and his J.D. from the University of Washington School of Law in 1997, with honors, where he was Executive Editor of the Washington Law Review.
Robert is admitted to practice in Washington, in the United States District Court, Western and Eastern Districts of Washington and in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He has represented clients in courts throughout the United States.
Memberships
King County Bar Association, Washington State Bar Association
Professional and Community Activities
Robert is a board member of Consumer Education and Training Services (CENTS), a nonprofit organization that educates and trains people in financial management and helps individuals prevent and overcome financial hardship. Robert has served on numerous other non-profit boards of directors. He has worked as a pro bono attorney representing victims of political persecution seeking asylum in the United States. Robert speaks at CLE's on creditor-debtor topics including bankruptcy and real estate foreclosures.
Awards and Recognition
Robert has received Pro Bono Publico Service Commendations from the Washington State Bar Association for performing at least 50 hours of pro bono service in a year. Robert has been designated a SuperLawyer® by Washington Law & Politics magazine.
Publications
Author, "Taxing Contingency Fee Attorneys as Investors; Recognizing the Modern Reality," 71 Wash. L. Rev. 745 (1996), republished in The Monthly Digest of Tax Articles, January 1997, at 23.
Co-author, Washington Lawyers Practice Manual chapter on secured transactions under the Uniform Commercial Code.
Numerous Continuing Legal Education publications on bankruptcy, creditors' rights, and commercial real estate foreclosure.
