Here's the difference; with plastic surgery, you start with an unwounded human being, and can plan and execute without haste and without distractions, working toward an optimum result to achieve mathematical perfection.
On a battlefield, your patient may have an arm blown off and two bullet wounds and be leaking unidentified fluids from unidentified locations. And then there's the shrapnel. And the patients, without anesthesia, will make such noises, without any regard for the surgeon's feelings!
Also on a battlefield, there are also some distractions, including that irritating whistle made by very small, very fast bullets, and the related issue with mortar fire.
So it is in law. In an area like tax planning or corporate governance, you have few time constraints and can take steps to optimize the result that will come out the other end of the process.
In an area like bankruptcy law, there may be little time (or no time) to plan; there may be distractions, like incoming lawsuits and threats from creditors, and unscheduled, middle of the night auto repos, and those pesky trustee's sales.
And as in battlefield surgery, the bankruptcy lawyer is primarily concerned with stopping the gushing blood, and splinting what's left of the leg, rather than making sure that the tiny, perfect stitches make a tiny hidden scar.
As a result, bankruptcy lawyers may tend to seem, sometimes, a bit less compassionate than many really are; they're trying to decide, on the fly, where to put the tourniquet, knowing that there's no perfect place left intact.
And so finding the optimum day to file a bankruptcy, and the optimum sort of bankruptcy, and what kind of bankruptcy is permitted for this client, and how much property is not exempt, and how the client can keep the car, all make for a fair amount of abstract thought; that is, making all the spreadsheets align properly, so the tourniquet isn't too tight. Or too loose.
And that's why nothing in a bankruptcy may seem perfect: it isn't. It's a study in compromises, because bankruptcy and perfection are not good friends.
Do not expect to keep all your property, or discharge all your debts, or to have a perfectly smooth ride through your bankruptcy. It happens, as it happens sometimes that a battlefield surgery leaves no scars.
But not as often as one would like.
Postscript: I sometimes see advertisements for bankruptcy with phrases like, "Incredibly easy!"
I've been an Arizona bankruptcy lawyer for 29 years or so; I look forward to my first incredibly easy bankruptcy. But I don't expect to see it anytime soon.
