When it’s an option, I always encourage clients to file lawsuits in Tennessee’s General Sessions Courts. Justice moves fast, efficiently, and cheap. The lawsuit you file today could be set for hearing next week; executions on the judgment could go out by the end of the month. Zip zap.
Nevertheless, lawyers often express uncertainty about whether a judgment from General Sessions Court–not a “court of record”–is enforceable in another state under under that state’s version of the Uniform Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Act (UEFJA).
I think they are. Here’s why.
If your General Sessions judgment is final and enforceable in Tennessee, why can’t you take to another state? “Foreign judgment” means “any judgment, decree, or order of a court of the United States or of any other court which is entitled to full faith and credit.” See Tenn. Code Ann. § 26-6-103.
In layman terms, it’s a judgment from another U.S. state court. Based on that, a Tennessee General Sessions judgment qualifies so long as the rendering court had jurisdiction and the judgment is valid and final, right?
“Final” in General Sessions Court is determined under Tenn. Code Ann. § 27-5-108, which says generally that any judgment that isn’t appealed within ten days. If you can garnish a bank account and wages on the judgment, why can’t you take it to another state?
So, yes, maybe small claims court has a more “vibrant” cast of characters than your typical courtroom, but that doesn’t mean the judgements granted there have any less legal impact.
The practice of law is “form” driven. That means that, once a lawyer drafts a really good document, she tends to go back to that document the next time that same issue comes up.
This is particularly true with foreclosures in Tennessee.
Tennessee statutes strictly define what must be included in a foreclosure advertisement at Tenn. Code Ann. § 35-5-104. As a result, a smart foreclosure attorney might start with an old form foreclosure notice, but then compare that against the statute’s checklist, and use that revised document as a form for all of his future foreclosures. (A dumb attorney would just run with whatever is in the form–or what AI says–and not doublecheck it against the law.)
With a little bit of detail work on the front end, a savvy lawyer has a form document that will guide him for years…until the law changes.
The TL;DR version is that the newspaper publications have been reduced from 3 times to 2 times and, now, foreclosing parties must post the notice with a “third-party internet posting company.” See Tenn. Code Ann. § 35-5-101.
If you are updating your form, however, you need to dig in on that other statute. There’s a discrete change in the sale notice requirements.
It’s at Tenn. Code Ann. § 35-5-104(a)(7), which adds that the sale notice “shall…[i]dentify the website of the third-party internet posting company that posts an advertisement pursuant to § 35-5-101(a)(2).”
I’m posting this warning because, candidly, I didn’t catch this change in my first reading of the new statutes. Instead, when I was preparing my first “post-July 1” sale notice, I went online and read other recent advertisements, to see what changes other law firms had made on their forms.
In doing that, I noticed this text in many of them: As of July 1, 2025, notices pursuant to Tennessee Code Annotated § 35-5-101 et seq. are posted online at https://foreclosuretennessee.com by a third-party internet posting company.
That’s weird, I thought. Why are they saying that? That’s when I dug in on § 35-4-104 and found that little change.
Non-judicial foreclosures in Tennessee are tricky. You have to comply with both the letter of the statute exactly and with the terms of the relevant lien instrument. In short, you have to be awesome at paperwork.
Big-picture compliance with the changes in Tenn. Code Ann. § 35-5-101 is easy. This post is a reminder that there’s a very little change in Tenn. Code Ann. § 35-104 that could have a big impact on your sale.
There’s a scene in Season 6 of Mad Men that considers this question.
After the merger of “Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce” with their rival, “Cutler Gleason and Chaough,” the partners meet to decide on a name going forward. The secretaries are confused: the official name is “SCDP-CGC,” but many are answering the phones with “Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce Cutler Gleason and Chaough.”
Both are mouthfuls. Every alternative considered is offensive to the partners in different ways. Some don’t like the order of the names. Some don’t like that the deceased partners remain in the title. Some partners don’t like that their own name (or initial) isn’t on the list. Some are just awkward and impossible to say. Every solution is worse than the one before.
In the end, they decide on “Sterling Cooper & Partners,” which is perceived as the least offensive choice (well, except to “Sterling” and “Cooper”).
This reminded me of law firm names.
Law firms have been, generally, named after a few of the lawyers in the firm. Maybe they are the founders and first partners. Maybe they are the rainmakers. Maybe adding a last name to the list is way to recruit the next generation of leaders.
Even though the rules of professional conduct no longer require law firms to use lawyers’ last names, law firm names are still, typically, just a list of last names. And, yes, it can be a mouthful, when it exceeds 3 or 4 names. When I’m typing it out for a letter, all I think about is the back office drama that went into the 7th partner getting his or her name added and how, maybe, that partner is going to fight whoever tries to be the 8th name. When a partner has a hard to pronounce name (like “Chaough”), I wonder if that was a mark against his or her partnership candidacy.
Over the past few decades, as partner ranks have grown, law firms have started to get inventive. In some cases, no matter how many actual partners there are, the firm simply has 2 or 3 partner names listed, following the Mad Men concept of annoying most of the partners equally.
Some mega firms go even more scaled back, using branding that highlights only 1 or 2 names. Sure, lots of people know “Skadden Arps,” but did you know it’s actually “Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP” and that none of Skadden or Arps or any of them are still at the firm?
Having said that, though, if you are reading this blog, you’ve probably heard of Skadden Arps, right? That’s good branding. If you call and ask for Mr. Skadden (or even Mr. Flom), they aren’t there anymore. But, you can be sure that whoever takes your call is going to be very well educated, have great credentials, and will be very expensive and litigious. That’s the “Skadden Arps” way.
I get it. Sometimes, a random assortment of last names has meaning in the market. When you’re a brand name with market cachet, you tend to want to keep that name.
There has been chatter over the past 4 months about the potential demise of Neal & Harwell, PLC, a Nashville litigation law firm that’s been around for more than 50 years. It has been historically regarded as a premier litigation firm in Nashville, based, largely, on the reputation of Mr. Neal and Mr. Harwell. At first, it was second-hand and unsubstantiated whispers, then, about a month later, founding partner Mr. Harwell left for a new firm, and then, over the following weeks, lawyers slowly started leaving for other firms.
I don’t know much about Womble Bond, but I remember that it’s one of those big law firms trying to get in on Nashville. I’m sure it’s a great move for all involved, and we’ll be seeing Womble Bond lawyers on the court dockets soon.
I may be biased, but I’ve never liked the long list of last names as a corporate name. Sure, sometimes there’s value (see above), but, sometimes, it’s just about ego, tradition, and lack of creativity. Not to mention that it’s a practice that favors old white guys.
We’ve seen lots of lawyers jumping firms over the past few years, which has included a number of named partners (who are discretely removed from the name), but I can’t remember a founding captain of a firm switching firms and leaving his name behind. Has that ever happened?
Notwithstanding my general dislike of last names as law firm names, I’ve been secretly hoping that one or many of the lawyers at the old firm would decide to simply keep the name and continue practicing as “Neal & Harwell, PLC” for years to come. It’s a brand built with 50 years of effort from many lawyers–and not just Mr. Neal and Mr. Harwell. Lots of unnamed partners have carried that flag for decades, and, just because they weren’t in the name, it doesn’t mean that they didn’t help build up that name.
Did they shut it down when Jim Neal (a huge legal figure) passed away? (No) Are there lawyers all over the country who think of great litigators in Nashville, have no idea about any of this, and will simply tell their Tennessee clients to call the “Neal & Harwell” firm? (Surely)
None of this is my business, and I don’t even know if keeping the old name was possible. (Maybe the Tennessee Rules of Professional Conduct prohibit it.) As somebody who left a firm and has suffered through many e-mail iterations over the last 5 years, maybe I’m just biased about keeping the old name and prefer to avoid the hassle.
But I would have considered it. That name meant something. RIP, Neal & Harwell. You were always a pain in the neck to have litigation cases against, and I respected you and your attorneys.
In the nearly 5 years after leaving my old law firm, I’ve opened 807 new matters.
That is a lot of files.
In fact, it’s so many that I was reluctant to mention it. For many lawyers, opening a lot of files is a negative thing, an indication that you run a high volume, “small” matter firm. The true honor, some would argue, is working on a very small number of very large, complex cases.
I won’t debate the different philosophies. After taking a leap of faith and leaving a big law firm to start a brand new, solo-focused firm, I’m just grateful that there have been at least 807 times that a client has said “I need David Anthony’s help on this” and called me.
And, sure, I’ve handled a lot of small files, like the dozens of times I’ve sent a demand letter and nothing else. Many have been big: File No. 797 was to foreclose on a notable Nashville commercial property valued at $120 million. File Nos. 227 to 274 were when a big bank client found out I had left and told my old firm to send me every open case I had touched while working there.
In retrospect, I should have left earlier. Some of my hesitation was, candidly, fear. Fear of whether I needed to be at a big firm to be taken seriously. Of whether I needed all the bells and whistles of a big firm. Whether clients would trust me if I started my own firm. Whether my phone would ring.
I was way off, but I’ve got mouths to feed and needed to be careful. You never know what the future holds. Some lawyers leave a big firm with a few boxes of files, but no plan on how to get more.
When younger lawyers ask me for advice, I tell them that there are things you can do early in your career that prepare you for long term success. That client development and professional development go hand-in-hand. Being a very good lawyer is the baseline expectation, but what really builds a career is the ability to connect with your clients, to understand their business and needs, to inspire trust, and to care enough to deserve that trust.
I tell clients too often: “You don’t have to worry about this any more. Your problems are now my problems.” That is absolutely not the most healthy approach to work/life balance (see the part in that post about my late night ER visit). Having said that, your clients can tell if you are just pushing paper around to satisfy your law firm’s billable hour requirements.
You have to practice law with a purpose. Be the attorney who goes the extra mile, who communicates more, and who makes the client look good. Impress the clients when you send the simple demand letter, and then they’ll call you on the big foreclosure.
Lawyer (and lawyer business coach) Lee Rosen has a great post about this, “Associates: You are Going to Leave.” In short, prepare to leave, long before you would ever leave.
After I left the old firm, I never looked back. I never needed to. I was lucky, but I also think we can create our own luck, with preparation and being bold when presented with opportunities.
Around this time of year, I always promise that I’ll share stories and advice about starting your own firm. I invariably get busy with work and then don’t post as much as I intended (this post was actually scheduled for about 2 weeks ago, when I opened File No. 800).
Oh well, maybe this year will be different. A disclaimer: While writing this, my paralegal opened File No. 808, and a client emailed me File Nos. 809 and 810.
The changes to Tennessee’s foreclosure laws went into effect on July 1, 2025, and, as you can imagine, Tennessee banks and foreclosure lawyers have had lots of questions on how to navigate them.
Today, let’s discuss one specific issue that keeps coming up: Now that new Tenn. Code Ann. § 35-5-101(a)(1) only requires publication “two (2) times in a newspaper,” does that preempt what my deed of trust says?
Many deeds of trust don’t have specific requirements; they just make a passing reference to “applicable law.” With those, you follow the statute and (now) do two publications.
Be careful, though: Lots of deeds of trust contain more specific requirements.
A few weeks ago (and after July 1), I prepared to foreclose under a $57,000,000 deed of trust. Naturally, I read every word of that deed of trust. (Many, many, many times.)
That deed of trust required the trustee to “advertise the time, place, and terms of sale at least three (3) different times in some newspaper published in the county where the Land is located…”
Remember, Tennessee is a “two track” foreclosure state, meaning that a foreclosing lender must satisfy the requirements of both the Tennessee foreclosure statutes and the requirements agreed to by the parties in the Deed of Trust.
So, in short: Yay, they have reduced the number of times a foreclosing lender must publish the foreclosure sale notice in the newspaper! Also, be sure to check your deed of trust to make sure you haven’t agreed otherwise.
The Tennessee Legislature has made some significant changes to the foreclosure process in Tennessee, and those changes to Tenn. Code Ann. § 35-5-101 take effect on July 1, 2025.
By my analysis, the new statute doesn’t apply to foreclosures initiated before July 1 and, for those of you who aren’t ready or willing to learn a new law, I tell you this: Issue your foreclosure sale notices now.
Here’s my analysis. Tenn. Code Ann. § 1-3-101 says “[t]he repeal of a statute does not affect any right which accrued, any duty imposed, any penalty incurred, nor any proceeding commenced, under or by virtue of the statute repealed.”
The Tennessee Supreme Court has considered a similar question and wrote “[t]hough ‘procedural’ changes in the law generally apply retrospectively to causes of action arising before such changes become law,… where the pending action has gone beyond the procedural stage to which the amendment pertains, an amendment will not apply.” See Smallwood v. Mann, 205 S.W.3d 358, 365 (Tenn. 2006).
In short, even though procedural legislation generally applies retroactively, this general concept doesn’t apply when the case has progressed beyond the procedural stage impacted by the new law.
By my own analysis (disclaimer: I could be wrong), if a foreclosure was already in its publication stage before July 1, 2025, the new law doesn’t apply.
After more than 25 years, I’ve practiced through many changes in the law. In that time, I’ve learned that there are always growing pains, confusion, and a little bit of chaos in the days, weeks, and months after a big change.
What I’m saying is: Call your bankers and ask them if you have any foreclosures on their desks.
The last time I went to Hawaii was in 2008, and I was on my honeymoon. I had just started work at a Big(ish) Nashville Law Firm, and I was nervous about taking a full week off, only six weeks in. (I was sort of worried that they’d deny my request to take a vacation.)
Fast-forward to this summer, 17 years later. Five years ago, I started my own law firm, and, as we planned another trip to Hawaii (with a 14 and 12 year old in tow), I began to worry about being away for two weeks and all the possible things that can come up.
Spoiler-alert: It was pretty easy.
My old law firm was run by folks in their late 60s and early 70s, and things like remote practice and cutting edge technology was never a priority (though our leather bound Martindale Hubbell collection was pristine).
When I started my own firm, I saw the rapid advances in technology made during the COVID pandemic and incorporated as much as I could.
The technology and systems that I use every day made the vacation so much easier than the one I took in 2008. For this trip, I leaned heavily on a few core tools:
Cloud-Based Practice Management: My firm uses Clio. All case files, deadlines, and client communications are accessible online. My firm bills via Clio, and, on the 12 hour flight, I was able to get all of my May 2025 bills generated, approved, and delivered to clients…from the airplane.
Microsoft Office: We are a Microsoft Office law firm. Microsoft is slowly pushing users to use the very secure online portal for Outlook, Word, and all the other applications. This is useful for remote work, obviously. I was able to access my entire law firm, easily, using a Microsoft Surface tablet.
Zoom & Microsoft Teams: Client meetings ran as usual. Other than the random and exotic bird noises they could hear.
NetDocuments with secure access: I use NetDocuments, an online document management system, so every document I needed was instantly available, but also secure. My paralegal could draft documents that I could easily access and respond to.
VOIP Phone System: I use Dialpad (but am not a huge fan). Regardless, when a client called my office, they got me (in Hawaii) or my staff (not on vacation with me).
E-Filing and Online Dockets: Lawyers violently oppose most technological advances, but the e-filing of pleadings (and new lawsuits) is so useful that even the most stubborn lawyers don’t fight this. In a pinch, I prepared and filed a lawsuit from a beach chair, and coordinated service of process via Proof Process Servers.
Calendar & Time Zone Discipline: Hawaii is 5–6 hours behind most of my clients and courts. That meant early mornings — I typically started work at 4:30 or 5:00 AM Hawaii time to stay in sync with the mainland. This worked pretty well; instead of emails “trickling” in during the morning, I had a full plate of emails to power through with coffee, and I’d check in again at lunch by the beach (when my banker clients had gone home for the day).
What I Learned
Time zone planning is everything: Build your schedule around your clients’ time zones, not your own. Having said that, to keep my family happy, I had to close the laptop by 8am in Hawaii…which was 1pm Nashville time. The time difference actually worked in my favor, as I had ample time to work, and then have guilt and distraction free days at the beach.
A tight schedule keeps you focused: Being away from the day-to-day distractions of the office actually helped me focus. With a solid daily routine (coffee, sunrise, email triage), I found my time blocks more productive.
Clients don’t care where you are, as long as you’re responsive: Big law firms cling too tightly to the old vestiges of tradition — fancy offices; suits and ties; strict hierarchies. For me, no clients cared that I was working remotely, because every call and email was answered promptly.
Final Thoughts
There are different mindsets when talking about running a law firm remotely. Some lawyers (the ones that may not have school age children) have the flexibility to run a truly remote firm, working in a new and exciting city and without being bound to a single location or your law partners’ judgey faces.
For me, I just needed to have a reliable tech-stack that would allow me to service my clients effectively while I was away. I had spent months preparing, blocking my calendar during that time, and warning clients about my limited availability.
It’s never easy to take a long vacation, especially if you are a busy solo lawyer, but it can be done–and fairly easily.
This was the first time that the Tennessee legislature limited a creditor’s collection rights after a foreclosure. And the text was pretty ambiguous.
The statute created two general scenarios where a debtor could fight efforts by a creditor to obtain a deficiency judgment after a foreclosure:
Where the debtor can make “a showing of fraud, collusion, misconduct, or irregularity in the sale process” (see Tenn. Code Ann. § 35-5-117(b)); or
Where the debtor can “prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the property sold for an amount materially less than the fair market value of property at the time of the foreclosure sale” (see Tenn. Code Ann. § 35-5-117(c)).
At the time, foreclosure attorneys focused on what “materially less” than “fair market value” meant. The legislative history of the statute revealed that the lawmakers pulled that phrase from divorce law, where a “material change in circumstances” could impact child custody decisions. (Not much guidance on foreclosure cases.)
But what about the part we all overlooked, Tenn. Code Ann. § 35-5-117(b)? We took that part for granted because, seriously, does any lender or foreclosure attorney commit fraud, collusion, misconduct, or irregularity in the sale process?
I don’t ask this in a rhetorical way. It’s an interesting question, and, in light of customary foreclosure practices in Tennessee, I think it’s ripe for litigation.
Here’s an example, which you can try at home. Grab your local newspaper (assuming one still exists in your area), and look for the foreclosure notices. Pick the first one you see, and call the foreclosure attorney and see what happens.
In my experience, it’s likely that:
The attorney/staff will never answer your call/email.
The attorney/staff will not call/email you back.
If you do hear back, you will not be provided with any information other than what is in the sale notice.
In many situations, you will not even get confirmation whether the sale is proceeding or not.
There will be sale terms announced in the minutes before the sale, but those are only rarely shared with interested parties in advance. Things like: Whether buyers need to bring cash. If so, how much. When will closing happen. Whether buyers need be pre-qualified.
These are fundamental questions that any reasonable bidder would expect to be provided. If an interested party doesn’t get these answers in advance, then they simply will not show up or, if they do, will be unprepared to bid. This uncertainty and failure to communicate leaves foreclosure bidding to the low-ball bidders, who make their money by exploiting the ambiguity (and low bid prices).
The failure to respond to interested parties’ reasonable questions will chill interest in a sale and will reduce the number of potential bidders. This could rise to the level of a violation of the foreclosure trustee’s duties under the Deed of Trust and could, possibly, render the sale “irregular.”
Foreclosing lenders in Tennessee should consider subpart 117(b) and how they or their counsel handle sales. Sure, no lender thinks their sale is “irregular,” but, on the right facts, you never know how a court will rule.
When I first met Tom Nenon, he’d hadn’t yet been made provost. He was just a professor in the (Memphis State) Philosophy Department.
This was in 1993, and I was starting my sophomore year, still struggling to find my way at a big university.
After a first semester in some difficult pre-med courses, I received a not-so-kind letter from the scholarship office over the Christmas holidays, informing me that, if my grades didn’t rise and exceed a certain threshold, I’d lose my full-ride (and then some) scholarship. My grades weren’t awful, but they were middling.
I was a first generation college student, and my first year was a bumpy ride. As the kid of a grocery store check-out clerk and a factory worker, I had no idea what college looked like or how I fit in there.
When I shared the letter with my family over the holiday break, my parents just shrugged their shoulders and said something to the effect of “Oh well, you tried. College isn’t for everybody.” It’s crazy, but also completely understandable. They had worked every day of their lives to build a great home and life, and they simply didn’t see why their healthy, smart 18 year old son would waste 4 of his prime working years.
It was nice to not get fussed at, but it was also pretty clear that, if I lost this scholarship, it was my problem to solve and, maybe, the end of college for me.
I was terrified. What scared me the most was that my grades weren’t the result of too much fun or partying or enjoying the college life-style. Instead, I was trying as hard as I could and, for the first time in my life, began to wonder if I was good enough to succeed.
I’d love to tell you that the second semester of my freshman year was all redemption and great successes. Nope, it was still really hard. In the end, I got my grades just up enough to keep the scholarship, with Biology II and General Physics making sure to keep me in doubt about my future.
The next year, my sophomore year, I avoided all the science classes. My parents–who were confused why I was even at college–were even more confused to hear about my studies in Sociology, Communication, and Classical Issues in Philosophy.
I was still a bit lost, but felt like, maybe, I was heading in the right direction.
Then I met Tom Nenon, my Philosophy 1101 professor.
If you’ve read this far, you’re probably expecting to hear about an internship or research project or some mentorship that grew into a life-long friendship. This is not that.
Here’s what Tom did for me. A few months into the semester–maybe in October–at the end of a lecture, he asked if “David Anthony was present and could meet me in my office.”
It was big lecture class, with about 75 students, and I remember the looks on my friends’ faces wondering what I had done. I was also a little bit concerned.
In his office, he greeted me as if I was a long-lost friend, and he sat me down and told me how impressed he has been with my work in class. He asked if I had ever considered studying philosophy, and he gave me a sales pitch about the department, the students and faculty, and all the things I could do with a philosophy degree (by that time, I had vaguely identified a law degree as a possible path). I felt like a 5 star point guard in the basketball facility. It was awesome.
In the end, I didn’t become a philosophy major. I took 3-4 more philosophy courses, but followed my heart into the English department. Other than a few hi’s and how are you’s, I’m not sure I talked much with Professor Nenon after that.
But here’s why I’m posting all this. After that day in his office, I never questioned whether I belonged on that campus. I also never questioned taking courses that I was passionate about. I never made anything less than an “A” in any class. And I never forgot the guy who not only saw my potential but made sure to celebrate and encourage it.
When Nenon was appointed Provost years later, I emailed him to congratulate him but also to share my gratitude for that very small moment that had such a ripple effect on my own journey.
His response was very kind and effusive, and I wish I still had it.
But, having read more about his life and passion for others, I am sure that I am just one of the thousands of students, friends, and colleagues whose lives and journeys were touched by Tom, and I’m so glad I was able to thank him, even if it came 20 years after the fact.
It’s a reminder how often we have the ability to help or encourage somebody, with the smallest gesture, and how easy it can be.
Thanks for the final lesson, Professor Nenon.
Incredibly sad to hear of Tom’s passing. He was beloved on the UofM campus and in our community. His will be missed and remembered for so many reasons but most importantly the thousands of lives and the community he helped make better. https://t.co/3WUWgQWW81
In that case, the Chancery Court allowed the lien to stand, drawing the mechanical distinction between the processes of recording a judgment and enforcing that lien via execution sale. The answer didn’t end the debate, since the reasoning wasn’t fleshed out in a memorandum opinion and never considered at an appellate level.
As a creditor lawyer who knows the immense value of getting a judgment lien recorded as soon as possible, I saw the case as a good first step, but have been eager to see an appellate court discuss this issue.
There, the Judgment Debtor posted a supersedeas / appeal bond after entry of the judgment, but the Judgment Creditor nevertheless recorded the judgment as a lien. Debtor demanded that the lien be removed as a “wrongful execution” because it was recorded while a bond was in place, and Creditor refused.
The Court of Appeals found in favor of the creditor, in fairly short order. “[F]iling a judgment lien does not constitute execution of a judgment.” Id. at *11. “Recordation of a judgment lien precedes execution.” Id.
Similar to the Davidson County Chancery Court’s reasoning, the appellate court drew a distinction between the processes of recording a lien and enforcing a lien, citing with approval the creditor’s analogy that “recording a judgment is ‘no more an execution than recording a deed of trust is a foreclosure’.” Id.
Recording a judgment as a lien is one of the most powerful collection tools in a creditor’s arsenal. It gives the creditor a lien on all property owned by the debtor in that county. The debtor can’t then transfer, refinance, or otherwise do anything with the property, unless the lien is paid or the creditor consents.
In considering whether the judgment debtor’s appeal was “baseless,” the Court notes the debtor “cites no Tennessee law to explain why it is a debatable question.” Id. at *11. The Court then cites text from ATS, Inc. v. Kent, 27 S.W.3d 923, 924 (Tenn. Ct. App. 1998), to support its conclusion, but that case didn’t consider this exact issue (the judgment in ATS was recorded about 46 days after entry).
With all due respect, I’ve practiced creditor rights law for more than 25 years, and lawyers ask me this exact question more than any other. That ATS decision offers hardly any guidance on this issue. In short, the creditor lawyer in me supports the outcome, but I’m disappointed with the reasoning.
Having said all that, there’s the answer: You absolutely can record your judgment as soon possible after entry.
Creditors Rights 101 