Bernard (“Bo”) Bollinger is Chair of the Firm’s Insolvency & Financial Law Practice Group and focuses on corporate restructuring, as well as the representation of secured and unsecured creditors and debtors in a wide range of bankruptcy matters across various industries. Practicing for nearly 40 years, he has substantial experience in nearly every phase of the reorganization process.  Mr. Bollinger is Chair of the Firm’s Insolvency and Financial Solutions Practice Group, and the Firm’s Chief Practice Management Officer. He is also Chair of the Firm’s Technology Committee and Chair of the Firm’s Continuing Legal Education Committee.

Bernard (“Bo”) Bollinger’s practice focuses on corporate restructuring and the regular representation of secured and unsecured creditors and debtors in various bankruptcy cases across a wide array of industries. Practicing for nearly 40 years, he has substantial experience in nearly every phase of the reorganization process.  Mr. Bollinger is Chair of the Firm’s Insolvency and Financial Solutions Practice Group, and the Firm’s Chief Practice Management Officer. He is also Chair of the Firm’s Technology Committee and Chair of the Firm’s Continuing Legal Education Committee.

Mr. Bollinger regularly represents creditors and acquirers in real estate related bankruptcy cases, including multiple engagements for some of the largest real estate development companies in Southern California. This expertise was the basis of multiple presentations, including, “Out of Mind But No Longer Out of Sight – Bankruptcy Issues Real Estate Professionals Will Soon Face,” an educational program that Mr. Bollinger presented to numerous organizations, including the San Francisco Real Estate Roundtable; various developers; a nationally-known real estate brokerage company; and to aspiring real estate developers at the University of Southern California’s Graduate School of Policy, Planning and Development.

Mr. Bollinger speaks regularly on various insolvency-related topics. HIs presentations include “LLC Membership Interests as Collateral and as Property of the Bankruptcy Estate: Value More ‘Limited’ Than You May Think,” at the Financial Lawyer’s Conference as well as the panel moderator on Stern v. Marshall at the Emory Bankruptcy Developments Journal Symposium in Atlanta. He also presented “Restructuring TICs: Strategies for Troubled Loans Secured by Tenant-In-Common Interests” at the Financial Lawyers Conference. He has been a guest speaker for the Los Angeles County Bar Association (Real Property Section) concerning insolvency-related real estate issues, and the Los Angeles County Bar Association (Commercial Loan and Bankruptcy Section) concerning Ninth Circuit decisions. Mr. Bollinger has also lectured at Loyola Law School, Southwestern University School of Law, and at the University of Southern California Graduate School of Policy, Planning and Development.

Mr. Bollinger, who is rated AV Preeminent by Martindale Hubbell, has been recognized by Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business as a leader in the field of Bankruptcy & Financial Restructuring. He also also been named Best Lawyer in America in the area of Bankruptcy and Creditor Debtor Rights and Insolvency and Reorganization Law and Litigation from 2016-2027. He is a past- President of the Board of Governors of the Financial Lawyers Conference and a member of the Los Angeles Bankruptcy Forum. Mr. Bollinger was selected to Southern California Super Lawyers list 2024, 2025 & 2026.

Surjit Chana is an accomplished board director and global technology executive with over 35 years of experience in governance, P&L management, digital transformation, AI, and strategic leadership. A former senior IBM executive, he brings deep expertise in aligning business and technology strategy and scaling organizations for growth. As a Harvard Fellow at the Advanced Leadership Initiative, he focuses on the intersection of technology, leadership, and societal impact, emphasizing a governance approach that strengthens oversight, deepens insight, and builds strategic foresight.

Mr. Chana serves on the Board of Directors of Beneficial State Bank and Bancorp, where he chairs the Technology Committee, is lead director for the Bank’s strategic planning, and is a member of the Asset-Liability Committee (ALCO). He also sits on the Technology Steering Committee of the Global Alliance for Banking on Values. He is certified by the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD.DC) and Carnegie Mellon’s Cybersecurity Oversight Program. He is Chair of the board of Care for the Homeless, a $67 million nonprofit whose mission impact he has helped to double, and a director of the University of Surrey U.S. Foundation.

Over his executive career, Mr. Chana held P&L responsibility for IBM’s $5 billion mid-market business, reversing its decline and returning it to growth, and for IBM’s $1 billion supercomputing business, growing it at double digits consistently. He led strategy, solutions, and marketing for IBM’s $13 billion hardware business, and marketing and communications across IBM’s $18 billion European business. As Chief Operating & Strategy Officer for IBM Digital, he delivered $150 million in operational savings and reshaped IBM’s digital portfolio strategy toward cloud, AI, and SaaS.

He later served as Executive Vice President of Women’s World Banking, where he helped secure the largest grant in the organization’s forty-year history and expand low-income women’s access to financial tools. He now leads Tech4Good Consulting, a firm dedicated to helping mission-aligned organizations harness emerging technologies for social good, and invests in early-stage technology ventures focused on social impact.

Mr. Chana holds multiple patents, including one in AI and expert systems from early in his career, and advises boards on AI governance, strategy, and responsible implementation. He is the author of the framework paper A Moral Architecture for AI in Finance, an opinion contributor to American Banker, and a keynote speaker to bank chief executives and board chairs at industry conferences globally.

Mr. Chana brings hands-on M&A experience defining, evaluating, and integrating acquisitions, alongside deep expertise in global channel development and sales coverage. Having lived and worked across the UK, Europe, Asia, and the United States, he brings a truly global lens to the boardroom.

Brian Lemus has spent 21 years building data, analytics, and AI capabilities at Bank of America, spanning deterministic systems, machine learning, and generative AI. As an executive, most recently he led the deployment of the first enterprise-approved generative AI model through 17 internal governance checkpoints. Separately, he maintained zero findings across more than 15 federal examinations over a decade, presenting directly to OCC, CFPB, and FRB examiners. He co-designed a 31-category deterministic regulatory detection framework with Compliance, Legal, Risk and Audit, deliberately built for interpretability and defensibility in front of regulators.

Brian is now an Executive Director at FTI Technology, where he leads AI strategy and deployment across enterprise operations, with an emphasis on defensibility, working the full technology spectrum from rule-based systems to agentic AI. He also leads independent AI ventures with patents pending. He contributed to President Biden's AI Executive Order (EO 14110) and is Co-Inventor on a U.S. patent for machine learning in banking.

Brian holds executive education from Stanford (AI-Driven Leadership), MIT Sloan/CSAIL (AI Strategy), and UCLA Anderson. He is a first-generation college graduate.

Keith R. Forrester, Esq., is a principal of Aldrich & Bonnefin. Since 1993, Mr. Forrester has been extensively involved with advising financial institutions on a variety of general banking operations and compliance matters. Mr. Forrester is a member of the firm's Operations and FinTech Practice Group and in that capacity assists financial institutions in areas such as Bank Secrecy Act compliance, funds transfers, information security, negotiable instruments, electronic banking, new accounts, treasury services, right to financial privacy laws and legal processes.

Tod V. Beebe is an experienced trial lawyer whose practice focuses on the representation of financial institutions and the representation of business entities and individuals in complex business disputes, including the representation of our clients’ interests in equity-holder disputes, real estate matters and post-merger indemnity claims.

Tod emphasizes empathy – both to understand the posture and needs of the client and to understand how all aspects of the case will be perceived by judges and juries.  He has tried cases in state and federal court as well as before many different arbitration panels and has argued appeals in both state and federal court.  Particular areas of emphasis include bank operations, real estate, bankruptcy, tax litigation, securities litigation, unfair competition, and business tort litigation.

Practice Areas

• Litigation
• Banking & Financial Services

Education

• J.D., University of California, Berkeley School of Law, 1981
• B.A., Cum Laude, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, 1978

Memberships

• Bank Operations Counsel Association
• California State Bar Association

State Bar Licenses

• California

Court Admissions

• U.S. District Ct., C.D. of California
• U.S. District Ct., N.D. of California
• U.S. District Ct., S.D. of California
• U.S. District Ct., E.D. of California
• U.S. District Ct., W.D. of California
• U.S. Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit
• U.S. Supreme Court

Ken Scott is a Partner at Relman Colfax, having joined the firm in 2022. He is focused on counseling financial institutions on best practices for complying with fair lending and consumer protection laws, and on navigating financial technology issues.

Prior to joining the firm, Ken served two tours of duty as a Trial Attorney at the Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Housing and Civil Enforcement Section, where he investigated and litigated fair housing and fair lending cases. Ken has also worked at a number of large financial institutions, where he served in positions ranging from fair lending counsel to head of consumer fairness compliance. While in law school, Ken participated in the Criminal Justice Clinic where he represented indigent clients. Ken also served in the U.S. Air Force.

Ken sits on the Board of the National Fair Housing Alliance and has presented at numerous conferences on fair lending and consumer protection issues.

Education

• J.D., Georgetown University National Law Center
• B.A., Kean University, summa cum laude

Admissions

• District of Columbia
• New York
• Pennsylvania (inactive)

Featured Cases

• State Street Civil Rights Audit
  • In late 2021, State Street Corporation (State Street) hired Relman Colfax to complete an independent civil rights audit. The audit examined State Street’s business policies, practices, products, and services from a civil rights perspective. The final audit report was published on May 30, 2023.

Kari Hall is a partner in the Consumer Financial Services and Litigation group at Paul Hastings and is based in the firm’s Washington, D.C. office.

Kari counsels financial services companies on regulatory, compliance and enforcement matters, with a focus on consumer lending and retail banking. She advises banks and non-banks on complex regulatory matters, risk management and enforcement matters across deposits, payments, mortgage, auto lending and open-ended credit. Kari has particularly deep experience advising on deposit account and card products, services and disclosures; electronic fund transfers and other electronic transfers and payments; fair lending; fair servicing; and unfair, deceptive or abusive acts or practices (UDAAP).

Kari advises clients regarding product development and compliance and represents clients in internal reviews and investigations as well as examinations, investigations and enforcement actions by the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Federal Reserve Board (FRB), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and state regulators.

Education

• Cincinnati College of Law, J.D., 2003
• Miami University, B.S., 1996

Mr. Cook is a principal of Aldrich & Bonnefin, PLC, and manages the firm’s Corporate and Lending Practice Group which includes corporate securities law and commercial and consumer lending. Mr. Cook regularly advises financial institutions and their boards of directors on various matters, including corporate governance issues, commercial lending matters, contracts and bank regulatory matters. He also advises on new banking products and services. Mr. Cook frequently speaks at events in the financial industry, including Bankers’ Compliance Group® events. Mr. Cook is a member of the State Bar of California and the Orange County Bar Association. He led the OCBA’s Banking & Lending Section as its Chair for 2018, having previously served as its Vice-Chair and Treasurer. Mr. Cook is also the President and Chief Executive Officer of the firm.

Rob McWhorter is a Shareholder in Buchalter’s Sacramento office, and is a member of the Firm’s Litigation Practice Group. He is the Chair of Sacramento’s Litigation Practice Group. His practice focuses on representing financial institutions and business entities in commercial, business and bankruptcy litigation. He has extensive experience handing lender liability actions, franchise litigation, bankruptcy, insolvency law, creditors’ rights, real estate disputes, corporate dissolutions, loan workouts and restructuring, receiverships, and litigation involving business torts and contract law. He has handled multiple complex liability claims against officers and directors of corporate entities. Through his bankruptcy and commercial practice, Mr. McWhorter possesses substantial expertise handling Article 9 issues under the Uniform Commercial Code.

He has defended national banking associations and/or receivers for failed financial institutions in lender liability actions. His experience includes cases involving the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA), 12 U.S.C. §§ 2601 et seq., the Truth in Lending Act (TILA), 15 U.S.C. §§ 1601 et seq. (TILA), the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), 15 U.S.C. §§ 1692 et seq., the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”), 15 U.S.C. §§ 1681, the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA), 12 U.S.C. §§ 1821 et seq., the Rosenthal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (RFDCPA), California Civil Code sections 1788 et seq., the Unfair Competition Law, California Business and Professions Code sections 17200 et seq. and the California Homeowner Bill of Rights. He has defended lenders in federal actions brought under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TPCA), 47 U.S.C. § 227.

For over 26 years, Mr. McWhorter has represented secured and unsecured lenders, trustees, troubled companies and individuals in chapter 7 and 11 bankruptcy proceedings, reorganizations and out-of-court restructurings. He also has represented clients in all aspects of debt restructurings, reorganizations, and debt enforcement, including real and personal property foreclosures. In addition, Mr. McWhorter has represented clients in chapter 9 bankruptcy proceedings, including California’s AB 506 process and has represented receivers in state court proceedings. His experience spans a wide range of industries, including real estate, manufacturing, and healthcare industries. His clients have included banks, pension funds, automotive suppliers, manufacturing companies, employee leasing companies, and mortgage companies.

His experience extends to representing beneficiaries, trustees and court-appointed special masters in contested trust litigation matters. His representation has included defending two beneficiaries in a contested breach of fiduciary action involving a multimillion real estate trust and co-trustee against other co-trustees for misconduct concerning trust administration.

Mr. McWhorter has extensive background in administrative law and healthcare, representing physicians and hospitals in disciplinary proceedings before state and federal agencies, including the Medical Board of California. He represented a county health plan against the State of California challenging the establishment of capitation rates under Medi-Cal.

Theodora R. Lee has extensive courtroom experience and practices before all state and federal courts in California and all employment-related regulatory agencies. She represents employers in:

• Class action litigation
• Wrongful termination and employment discrimination litigation
• National Labor Relations Board matters
• Representation cases
• Unfair labor practice proceedings
• Grievance arbitrations
• Title VII proceedings, including race, sex, religious and age harassment and discrimination
• Unfair competition proceedings
• State and federal wage and hour litigation

Theodora's recent litigation successes include class actions involving disparate impact; unpaid commissions and expense reimbursement; employee status, overtime, meal and rest periods; and overtime and exempt status under the California Labor Code and Fair Labor Standards Act. She also has served as lead trial counsel or co-counsel in multiple jury trials and obtained defense verdicts in cases alleging race discrimination, racial harassment, sexual harassment and retaliation, as well as a case alleging violation of the Unruh Civil Rights Act and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Additionally, she defends various corporations in cases in state or federal courts alleging Fair Employment and Housing Act violations, wage and hour class actions, and whistleblower and wrongful termination claims, and has obtained dismissals via summary judgment in countless cases.

A settlement commissioner, AAA certified arbitrator and mediator, Theodora has concluded more than 1,000 matters through use of private arbitration or mediation, including large, complex, multi-party litigation actions, and individuals suing their employers.

Theodora also counsels employers on:

• The Americans with Disabilities Act
• The Uniform Trade Secrets Act
• The California Business and Professions Code
• The Family and Medical Leave Act
• Employee terminations
• Corporate compliance
• Litigation avoidance
• Reductions-in-force
• The development of personnel policies and procedures
• Workplace violence
• Pre-employment screening
• Federal and state wage and hour issues
• Employment agreements
• Restrictive covenants
• Trade secrets and unfair competition
• Drug and alcohol testing

Theodora has been a contributing writer to numerous employment law publications and presents seminars on a wide variety of employment issues and regularly conducts in-house employment law training programs. She is an elected member of the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA).

Prior to entering the practice of law, Theodora worked as a Senate intern in Washington, D.C., for Senator Sam Nunn.