Bankruptcy Chair Ryan Works interviews with Of Counsel: “I make sick companies better.”

Ryan Works, Chair of McDonald Carano’s Bankruptcy, Insolvency & Financial Restructuring Practice, was interviewed in the June 2026 issue of Of Counsel: The Legal Practice and Management Report. The interview covers Ryan’s path to the legal profession, the factors that led him to the field of bankruptcy, and his 23+ year career at McDonald Carano. Ryan also shares his insights on why he likes his bankruptcy practice, what differentiates him from other bankruptcy practitioners, and what he looks for when recruiting bankruptcy lawyers. He also describes the outlook for bankruptcy work in the current economic and geo-political environment. Ryan’s interview is provided below and available in pdf here.

“With Demand High and Climbing, Bankruptcy Lawyer Draws on Extensive Knowledge and Experience to Serve Clients in the Mountain West and Beyond”

Of Counsel: The Legal Practice and Management Report, June 2026

In an era when economic volatility, rising interest rates, and shifting market dynamics have made financial distress a constant concern for businesses across industries, bankruptcy and restructuring lawyers have found themselves at the center of some of the most consequential legal and business decisions of the day. Few practitioners understand the landscape better than Ryan Works, chair of the bankruptcy and restructuring practice at Nevada-based MacDonald Carano LLP.

Works has built a reputation as one of the leading insolvency attorneys in the Mountain West, advising clients through high-stakes restructurings, workouts, litigation, and bankruptcy proceedings with a practical, business-minded approach.

Over the course of his career, Works has earned widespread recognition from peers, clients, and legal industry publications alike. He has been honored by numerous professional organizations and rankings publications for his work in bankruptcy, creditors’ rights, and commercial litigation, distinctions that reflect both his technical command of the law and his standing within the profession. He’s known as a steady strategist capable of navigating the complex intersection of law, finance, and business realities that defines modern restructuring work.

At a time when many companies are confronting mounting debt pressures, liquidity challenges, and operational uncertainty, Works and his team are staying extremely busy meeting the evolving demands placed on restructuring counsel. From representing creditors and trustees to guiding distressed businesses through reorganization efforts, he has seen firsthand how the practice has changed in recent years—and how lawyers must adapt alongside it. His experience also provides insight into broader trends affecting law firms, clients, and the economy itself.

Works spoke with Of Counsel and the following is an edited transcript of that interview.

Acting on Guidance from a Judge

Of Counsel: Ryan, as you know, we always start these interviews with essentially the same question, and that is: What made you decide to become a lawyer?

Ryan Works: I’ve wanted to be a lawyer for so long. I feel like it was in elementary school or secondary education when that desire started. I was always really interested in the U.S. government and state and local politics. And, my father was a lawyer. I was dead set on going to law school, and I took classes leading up to getting into law school that were all directed to that particular goal of mine.

OC: What was it about the bankruptcy area that created an interest for you in this, when you could have done so many different areas? Why bankruptcy and restructuring?

RW: That’s an easy story; I tell it all the time. Judge Gregg W. Zive, a U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the District of Nevada in its Reno, Nevada office, is a senior judge now and a nationally and probably internationally famous bankruptcy judge for how good he is. He was a member of the country club where I was working in Reno during my summers in college. I used to see him a couple of times on the weekends. I started talking to him a little bit about going to law school and went to law school in the fall of 2001, to Boyd at UNLV.

There is a summer extern director there named Marty Greer. Due to the newness of the law school, the summer externships were only available in Las Vegas, and they didn’t have any real connections to the Reno judiciary. I think he saw that I was from Reno and said, “I’d appreciate your help in introducing me to some of the judges in northern Nevada so we can maybe place some externships there during the summer.”

Naturally, I reached out to Judge Zive. I told him I’d called him first. He said, “Sure, I’ll take an extern, absolutely.” And I think he has done that [every year] all the way up until he took senior status. I reported back to Marty, and he said, “Please ask him who he wants.” So, I asked Judge Zive, and he said he wanted me.

So that was the start and the end of the bankruptcy story for me because working for him, having his name on my resume, even for a three-month summer externship, opened massive doors. His name was all over Reno and all over my resume, and when people saw my resume, they saw “bankruptcy.” It’s always hard to find a bankruptcy lawyer, and more importantly, they saw “Judge Zive”—and the rest, as they say, is history.

My first couple of years out of law school as a practicing attorney were ‘05, ‘06, ‘07, and then 2008 was The Great Recession. And that basically ended any idea that I would do anything else.

OC: I’ll bet it was all hands-on-deck during that time in the bankruptcy area.

RW: Yes. I don’t even remember many of those years because I was so busy and I had so many open files and bankruptcy cases all across the country. It was crazy.

OC: To back up for a minute, just so I’m clear: You called Judge Zive because you knew him through the country club?

RW: Yes, and he helped direct me. He said, “You’ve got a wonderful opportunity to go to the first law school in the state of Nevada.” I went to the University of Nevada, Reno, for my undergraduate studies and grew up in Carson City. I’ve spent my whole life in Nevada. I was talking to him about the school and the newness of it, and there were questions about whether or not to make that decision to attend. It wasn’t accredited for the first couple of years of its existence, so making that choice was an important one. He kind of headed me in that direction.

OC: When you first started practicing, did you start at McDonald Carano?

RW: Yes, I’ve been here my whole career. Andy Gordon, who is Judge Gordon now, a district court judge in Las Vegas, gave me my acceptance letter after the fall interviews of 2002, because you interview pretty early in the fall, with your callback firms and stuff like that. McDonald Carano was one of my top choices. They sent me a paper airline ticket in the mail. I flew to Reno on a Friday and met with all the name partners in a giant conference room. I guess it went pretty well because they said, When can you start in Reno?

They didn’t know I had no interest in moving back to Reno. I’d gone to college there, but that was about it. I really thought of myself as living in a big city in my early twenties, and I wanted to stay in Las Vegas. I told them I wanted to work in Las Vegas. They said, “why are you here?” I said, “because you sent me a plane ticket.”

They shipped me back to Las Vegas. At the time, I can’t remember if any of the attorneys interviewed in both offices, but I did. They sent me an offer, and I started early because I didn’t have any money or a job. And I was thinking, what am I going to do for four or five weeks over the Christmas break? And Andy Gordon said, “Why don’t you come to work the week after Christmas? We’ve got some stuff for you to do.” And I did. So, I started early, and I’ve been at McDonald Carano ever since.

Counseling Clients across a Full Spectrum of Industries and on Both Sides of the V

OC: What do you like about bankruptcy law?

RW: It’s a different industry with every case. You’re dealing with the airline industry one week, mining the next, and the next project you could be saving an emergency room, or restructuring a small business or a big business. It really keeps your interest because it’s always something different.

It’s a mix of two different practice areas. It’s both transactional in many ways and it’s litigation in many ways. Most of it is focused on resolutions, so you get a lot of ADR and a lot of settlement conferences, and try to put together something that will ultimately save jobs and keep taxpayers in place for governmental authorities and keep companies operating, which feels good at the end of the day. It’s nice to restructure a company or sell a company and have somebody else take it to the next chapter of its life, or do something that’s not total company destruction or litigation. So, I’ve always enjoyed that part of it.

It’s sophisticated, too, in an array of ways. I’ve met many very good lawyers, in my view, at top firms through their bankruptcy departments, where I’ve gotten the opportunity to work alongside some of the more sophisticated lawyers in the world.

OC: To what extent does it differentiate you in that you represent both creditors and debtors? I know some bankruptcy attorneys do that as well, but more of them tend to primarily represent one side or the other.

RW: I think that diversifies me and sets me apart from some of the attorneys who only represent banks and lending institutions and hedge funds versus others who only represent debtors. And in Nevada, you can do that, and you kind of have to do that, just because we’re not Delaware, and we’re not the southern district of Texas [both are jurisdictions where many bankruptcy matters are filed], and we’re unique in the fact that we’re a smaller state.

I enjoy having both options available to me. I think it certainly helps me see more clearly no matter who we represent. I like the debtor side probably more than I like the other side because it’s my client and me against the world, and we’re trying to put together something to make sense for everyone and a resolution that makes it through to a confirmed plan.

OC: To quote you from five minutes ago, the way you described “saving an emergency room,” that’s something that you do for business purposes, and you do it with legal means, but the way you say the word “save” indicates that you feel a certain amount of pride and a sense of civic duty in doing that work. Am I reaching here, or is that accurate?

RW: That’s a good way to say it. I told my judge in that case at the confirmation that, at some point in my career, somebody told me I needed an elevator pitch, and I came up with “I make sick companies better.” And in that particular emergency room case, I was making a sick company better that really was making sick people live, so it was more rewarding than something else. That was a cool project.

Moving and Learning at a Rapid Pace

OC: What do you dislike? What’s a real pain in the neck? What’s frustrating? What do you wish you could change?

RW: The speed at which people require you to tackle a very complicated subject and turn it around in this age of instant gratification. That’s probably the most frustrating. You don’t have days, you have hours to respond and start solving a problem. Our schedules are such that we have other things that have been calendared, scheduled, hearings, deadlines, meetings, depositions, stuff that was already ongoing, but despite that, that email that just came in at the most inopportune time requires immediate attention. So staying on top of everything at all times is probably my major complaint.

OC: You talked earlier about how you like working in different industries. I’m sure you learn a lot about them, but it also requires a fast pace with which you have to come up to speed to learn at least some of the foundations of an industry and speak their language, right? I’m guessing that’s not hours but probably days and weeks. Is that something that you wish you could change?

RW: That’s 100% true. Bankruptcy lawyers, especially in Nevada, aren’t tied to any specific industry, so you see the headlines and all the different kinds of companies that are filing bankruptcies, you have to be able to quickly get to know something about the actual business operations in most instances, so that you can do your job.

OC: You’ve handled so many matters and cases in your career but are there a couple that stand out?

RW: I had an airline case once, and I’d never been a debtor’s lawyer on an airline case before. It was perhaps the most challenging and most rewarding project that I had in my career to that date. There were specific provisions of the bankruptcy code that were written [long ago]. The case involved a smaller outfit based in Boise, Idaho, and I got to really interact with our principal, the owner and founder of the company; he was great to work with. And I had a lender’s lawyer out of Texas who just made me work about as hard as I ever had to work in my life to get what I wanted to get done, which was a confirmed plan. That one stands out in my history.

And then most recently, I got to work on [a matter involving] Nevada Copper alongside some of the best lawyers in the country and took a pretty active role despite being Nevada local counsel. It was a massive bankruptcy case; it was a mega case; it was before a great judge of ours in Nevada; and we had a tremendous result.

It was just a great case, and I got to work with great people on so many issues—every single issue that you can think of, from labor and employment to tax to securities to mining law, which I obviously know nothing about, and now know something about. It keeps me interested, when I get to go into a new case like that and learn all sorts of new things that I never even thought of.

Signs Point to a Continued Busy Bankruptcy Arena

OC: Since the tariffs of 2025, and now with the war going on in West Asia, all over the Gulf states, and the economy in the state that it’s in, are you seeing that you’re going to be very busy—maybe not quite as busy as 2008, at least we hope not in terms of the economy, but is that something that you and your team are gearing up for? I know you chair the bankruptcy group. Are you looking to hire more attorneys? What does the near future look like?

RW: I wish I knew. We had predicted that after COVID, really after Trump won and COVID, that we would see a huge influx of new cases. Then the tariffs came, and that certainly put us all on alert, that there would be increased filings and financial strain and everything. I haven’t seen it so much in Nevada, but maybe more nationally, and maybe internationally as well. But not as much here in Nevada as we would have thought, or as I would have predicted or did predict.

But I still think that many of the signs are still there. There’s a lot of debt out there, and consumer spending is down, and we’re seeing the filings increase at the consumer level, which usually comes first, and then small businesses and other businesses come next. So, I still think that there’s going to be an event at some point where we are going to be too very busy again.

The problem with hiring a bankruptcy lawyer these days is that there aren’t many to hire. I don’t see a lot of young lawyers coming through the office that have bankruptcy at the forefront of their minds. Now, when I introduce it to them, as they think about what they want to do with their career, they all seem to enjoy it.

And, there will always be a need. Companies are always going to fail. Invariably throughout my life there has never been a situation where I thought work was going to dry up because companies are always going to fail. They are always going to need a bankruptcy lawyer.

OC: In addition to all the traits that we look for in good attorneys, good young attorneys, like communication skills, the intellect, the collaborative nature, is there anything particular to the bankruptcy area that you’re looking for either in a first year or a lateral, in addition to the lateral’s book of business, is there anything else that pops up?

RW: No. I’ve been trained at this point to not look for a bankruptcy lawyer because they just don’t exist. But when I see a young lawyer come in, I obviously want them to be very good academically and a very good writer. I think writing has always been number one for me. Aside from that, I want to have a conversation with them and an interview process where I think they can communicate with the court, the judge, the client, and their fellow partners and associates, so communication is huge.

OC: Is a business background important, or doesn’t it necessarily matter?

RW: Oh, I wish I had a business background. If I had to go back and do anything all over again, I probably would have studied business in my undergraduate studies because I think I would benefit from it. I would have accelerated much more quickly had I had a business or finance type of background.

OC: But somehow, you’ve done pretty well anyway. When you look onto the horizon, what do you see? Will you and your team just keep growing and doing what you’re doing at Nevada’s largest law firm?

RW: There are always practice areas that we’re looking to fill and retirements that we’re looking to have a succession plan for. I’m in leadership at the firm so I do spend time thinking about those issues and bringing us into the next generation of lawyers who have all been trained differently and learning differently and researching differently. So I think it’s just continuing to adapt and continuing to maintain our presence as Nevada’s premiere Nevada-based law firm.

Media Contact

Mark Buckovich

mbuckovich@mcdonaldcarano.com
702.257.4559