The evidence is clear: Kaaran Thomas has done her homework and can boil the bankruptcy issue down into simple terms, as only a professor can. Of course, simple is relative when you’re talking about a complex — and highly stressful — business undertaking.

Recently hired by McDonald Carano Wilson LLP, Thomas serves as chairwoman of its creditors’ rights, bankruptcy and corporate restructuring group. Her primary passion is to breathe new life into struggling businesses.

“But you have to catch them in the early stages,” she says. “There’s a power curve as to when you can rescue a business.” Catch it early and you have a fighting chance. Too late, and, well, the business dies. Then her focus turns to bankruptcy, commercial litigation — the stuff corporate nightmares are made of.

Thomas comes to Reno from a partnership at Vinson & Elkins LLP in Houston, Texas, via Las Vegas and the Beckley Singleton firm. She’s entering a bankruptcy arena, at least locally, that has followed close behind the Vegas market in terms of sheer numbers. The Reno/Northern Division of the District of Nevada United States Bankruptcy Court chalked up 43 Chapter 11 filings in 2006, to the Southern Division’s 51.

POWER PLAYER

Thomas is one of only two practicing attorneys in Nevada to be admitted to the American College of Bankruptcy, where she serves as co-chair of the education committee. She has been an adjunct professor of law at the University of Texas School of Law and adjunct professor at the University of Nevada, Reno College of Business Administration. And she currently is the vice chair of the American Bar Association Subcommittee on Chapter 11 Committees.

Big credentials to be sure, yet they tell just half the story. Bankruptcy captivated Thomas from the get-go, a carryover from her undergraduate work in political theory. When she graduated from University of Houston’s Bates College of Law in 1977 (JD Magna Cum Laude), her focus on bankruptcy looked as if it would hold her back. “None of the big firms needed bankruptcy attorneys,” she recalls.

That changed in the 1980s. “The whole world changed,” says Thomas. Big oil busts and savings and loans crashes, along with a change in bankruptcy law, transformed the corporate world.

Avoiding checkmate

“Bankruptcy today involves everything,” she says, “commercial loans, real estate, trusts, employment taxes, environmental regulations — all those laws.” When she works a bankruptcy, she works with an entire team of attorneys at McDonald Carano Wilson.

But catching a business early enough to turn it around, that’s the real excitement of the game. Like a well-trained athlete wrapped in a designer suit, Thomas approaches this piece of the litigation world with her greatest passion. “You hear about turnaround management mostly in hindsight,” she says.

Her advice applies to small businesses as well as large corporations. “People don’t want to spend money on consultants,” she says. But floundering without help is a banana peel short of bankruptcy. “Get help,” she advises.

the next move

As vice president of the U.S. Turnaround Management Association, she’s helping compile a directory of experts that struggling business owners in the region can turn to and a Web site. “Nevada’s turnaround management group is the fastest growing in the country,” she says.

Chalk that growth up to a few contributing factors, she adds, first among them the increasing corporate sophistication of the Silver State. Add to that the numerous California businesses coming here, the outstanding growth of native Nevada businesses, the impact of the university’s business school, and retirees bringing businesses with them into the area.

“Nevada has been lucky in escaping the downturns of the rest of the country,” Thomas says, and it’s been getting its share of a growing economy. But this silver stretch of luck does not mean she’s relaxing her vigilance. She’s keeping an eye on key industries in Northern Nevada.