Oliver Max Gardner III

Founder, Bankruptcy Bootcamp

O. Max Gardner III, the scion of a legendary North Carolina political dynasty, is the best known consumer bankruptcy lawyer in America. Business Week calls Max the “go to person for all bankruptcy issues” and Gretchen Morgenson, the Pulitzer Prize winning reporter for The New York Times, refers to Max as “Angelo Mozillo’s worst nightmare.” Mozillo is the former founder and CEO of Countrywide Home Loans. Max is fond of saying that if you put the names of all of the current and past mortgage originators and servicers on a board and then threw darts blindfolded you would be “100 percent sure of hitting somebody I have sued!”

Gardner received his undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1969 and graduated with high honors from the UNC School of Law in 1974, where he was a member of the North Carolina Law Review, President of the Student Bar Foundation, named the Outstanding Law School Graduate of 1974, and elected to the Order of the Coif. Following graduation he served as the Senior Law Clerk to the Hon. William H. Bobbitt, the late Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, and as Senior Law Clerk to the Hon. William Copeland, an Associate Justice of that Court. During his work with Justice Copeland, he also worked closely with Chief Justice Susie Sharp, the first female Chief Justice of any state Supreme Court.

Following his clerkships, Gardner worked for three years with the Smith Moore law firm in Greensboro, North Carolina. His primary working partner at Smith Moore was the legendary J. McNeill Smith, Jr. Gardner later served as Treasurer in Smith’s 1978 campaign for the United States Senate. Gardner served as General Counsel of North Carolina’s Democratic Party from 1986 to 1992. He was a standing member of the Democratic Leadership Conference during this period of time. During these years, he also managed his law practice in Shelby, which he opened in 1977. He also acted as “Of Counsel” to the Washington, D.C. law firm of Sims Walker & Steinfeld from 1992 to 1996.

During his Washington years, Gardner worked on thousands of cases involving the Federal Trade Commission, the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Bankruptcy Code. Gardner was Special Counsel to Chapter 7 Trustees in national ICC litigation and in one emergency case personally filed more than 1,000 adversary proceedings in one week so as to protect the Trustee from statute of limitation issues.

During his years of practice, Gardner has tried 102 jury cases to a final verdict. He was successful in all but 2 of those cases and really does not count one of the two losses as a loss since he was granted a new trial due to witness misconduct and won the case the second time around.

Gardner currently limits his practice to consumer bankruptcy cases and all consumer claims arising with respect to those cases. He has been widely recognized as one of the leading consumer attorneys in America on “predatory mortgage servicing” in Chapter 13 bankruptcy cases. Gardner has been a featured speaker for years for Bankruptcy bar groups and associations throughout the United States and has personally been a presenter at more than 200 such seminars.

Gardner was named the Outstanding Consumer Lawyer of 2004 by the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys (NACBA) and has been elected five times as a member of the “Legal Elite” of North Carolina lawyers by his fellow attorneys in a state-wide poll conducted by Business North Carolina magazine. He is the only consumer lawyer who has been named as a North Carolina “Super Lawyer” for four consecutive years by Law & Politics and the Charlotte Magazine. His most recent Super Lawyer Designation was awarded on January 1, 2009. He is a long-time member of NACBA, the National Association of Consumer Advocates (NACA), the North Carolina Bar Association and the North Carolina State Bar.