PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release

January 9, 2004 

ILENE LASHINSKY TO SERVE AS U.S. TRUSTEE

IN NORTHWEST FOR INTERIM PERIOD

            WASHINGTON, D.C.–Lawrence Friedman, Director of the Executive Office for United States Trustees, announced today that Ilene Lashinsky will serve as United States Trustee for Washington, Oregon, Montana, Idaho, and Alaska (Region 18) for an interim period effective January 2, 2004, due to the retirement of United States Trustee Diane Tebelius. Lashinsky is also the United States Trustee for Arizona (Region 14).

            Immediately before her appointment as Region 14 U.S. Trustee on November 18, 2002, Lashinsky was of counsel to the Scottsdale, Ariz., firm of Hymson & Goldstein P.C., where her practice focused on representing creditors and debtors in complex commercial bankruptcy matters and commercial litigation. For the previous 17 years, she was a partner at Davis & Lowe P.C. in Phoenix. During a leave from that firm in 1998 and 1999, she served as resident bankruptcy advisor to the CFED-USAID Macedonia Commercial Law Project, assisting in workouts of major financially distressed Macedonian businesses and advising ministry representatives regarding the government’s role in the transition to a free market economy.

            Before joining Davis & Lowe P.C., Lashinsky practiced commercial and bankruptcy law with Leslie L. Miller P.C. and with Streich, Lang, Weeks, Cardon & French. She has also served as Director of Continuing Legal Education for the State Bar of Arizona, where she helped design and develop legal education curricula and material, and as an adjunct faculty member for Arizona State University’s Russian and East European Studies Consortium. Lashinsky received her law degree cum laude in 1972 from Arizona State University College of Law in Tempe, Ariz., and her undergraduate degree in 1969 from Arizona State University.

            The U.S. Trustee Program is a component of the Justice Department that protects the integrity of the bankruptcy system by overseeing case administration and litigating to enforce the bankruptcy laws. Region 18 is headquartered in Seattle, with offices in Spokane, Wash.; Portland and Eugene, Ore.; Great Falls, Mont.; Boise, Idaho; and Anchorage, Alaska.

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