J. Michael Debbeler

Mike Debbeler is a natural born teacher.  He’s a teacher in the sense that another word for teaching is sharing.

“I love teaching,” Mike says.  “I think the ability to help people understand complex subjects and hopefully pass on to them my love for this subject or that subject, and then watch them grow from the experience – it’s a joy.

“Any decent kindergarten teacher would say the same thing.”

To that end, Mike speaks at a cluster of seminars each year, all related to some area of his area of practice. He began speaking at seminars a couple years after starting his practice in 1981.  For the past couple decades, he was involved in putting together the Midwest Regional Bankruptcy Seminar.

He has also moderated various panels of judges and takes pride in having addressed racism and sexism in the court system on those occasions.  And as a VOLO editor for the American Bankruptcy Institute, he is often asked to write case summaries about new decisions.  The assignments require speedy turnarounds.

“You have three hours to accept and 24 hours to write the summary.  I’ve had requests come at midnight.  I always like doing them.”

He taught students at the University of Cincinnati College of Law when he was a student himself – that as a third-year law student in the Appellate Advocacy course. He was also a Visiting Instructor in Law at UC teaching Legal Writing and Research and Appellate Advocacy.  A fear of public speaking, he does not have.

Mike’s idea of a nightmare scenario would be to somehow slip into a wormhole and wake up in a world without books.  He’s one of those readers who is perpetually in the middle of not just two or three books but a whole bunch of them.  He has read every legal thriller with John Grisham’s name on it and snaps up anything new from Scott Turow and Jeffrey Toobin.

But his reading takes in many more genres than legal fiction.  There isn’t much he loves more than finding a new subject to focus on.  He then sets out straightaway to collecting the right literature that will give him more than an armchair acquaintance with whatever worlds those interests inhabit, to wit:

“Here’s my new thing, or one of them -- wine and bourbon.  I thoroughly enjoyed a book called ‘Cork Dork’ and another called ‘In Vino Duplicitas,’ which was all about a famous wine forger.  ‘No More Champagne’ was good, too – did you know Pol Roger was Churchill’s favorite champagne?  As for the other, I don’t necessarily read books on bourbon.  But I do read a lot about bourbon.”

He’s happy at Graydon.  “The Firm lets me do what I love to do and encourages me to do it.  This is a good place for me.”