Draft First Day Motions Package

Skill: Draft First-Day Motions Package

1. Subject-matter triage

• Treat the package as a coordinated set of court filings, not isolated templates.
• Identify the debtor group, the non-filers, the cash flows, the workforce, the financing stack, and the operational dependencies before drafting any motion.
• If the source set contains multiple entities, multiple programs, multiple payroll groups, or multiple utility/counterparty relationships, enumerate them first and draft to each distinct item rather than using one representative example.
• Draft the core filing first, then the supporting declaration and motions, and keep the operative relief in each document rather than in a cover summary.
• Where the facts are incomplete, preserve the issue and state the needed assumption explicitly instead of inventing details.

2. Failure modes the skill is correcting

• Boilerplate first-day drafting that omits the debtor-specific facts needed to justify extraordinary relief.
• Failure to align the CRO declaration with the motions on entity structure, liquidity, financing history, and operational distress.
• Omission of exclusion rationale for any non-filing affiliate or program entity.
• Underdeveloped treatment of customer-facing liabilities, employee claims, tax exposure, insurance continuance, intercompany balances, and contract assumption risk.
• Cash-management language that ignores intercompany claim preservation or risks substantive-consolidation arguments.
• Motion drafting that states a requested power without tying it to the bankruptcy provision, the factual predicate, and the operational consequence.
• Inconsistent figures, dates, names, or program descriptions across the declaration and the motions.
• Missing exhibit architecture, proposed orders, or motion-specific legal standards.
• Generic “urgency” language that does not explain why the relief is needed at the outset of the case.

3. Legal frameworks / domain conventions that apply

• Chapter 11 first-day relief must be grounded in the Bankruptcy Code provisions most directly implicated by the requested relief, and each motion should cite the operative section or rule supporting it.
• Cash-management and bank-account relief should be framed around the debtor’s ordinary-course operating needs, postpetition account usage, and preservation of funds and intercompany claims.
• Wage and benefits relief should track the Bankruptcy Code provisions governing employee compensation, benefit continuance, and administrative handling of prepetition and postpetition obligations.
• Utility relief should be analyzed under the Bankruptcy Code utility-adequate-assurance framework, with case-specific facts showing why the proposed deposit or assurance is sufficient.
• Critical-vendor relief should be tied to the debtor’s need to preserve continuity of supply or service, with a factual showing that the vendors are actually critical and that the requested treatment is bounded.
• DIP-financing relief should address necessity, use of proceeds, budget discipline, interim authority if sought, and the relationship to cash collateral or existing liquidity.
• The CRO declaration should present a sworn factual narrative supporting the requested relief and should not read as a legal brief alone.
• If a motion implicates executory contracts, franchise arrangements, labor reductions, trust-fund taxes, or self-insured retention obligations, the motion should flag those issues and explain whether the requested relief touches them directly or only indirectly.
• Use controlling authority for each legal proposition; do not rely on generic “courts routinely grant” phrasing without naming the statute, rule, or doctrine.

4. Analytical scaffolds

• CRO declaration:

  • Identify the CRO’s qualifications, role, retention terms, and fee structure.
  • Describe the business, locations, revenue drivers, and operational dependencies.
  • Map the corporate structure, including the filer set and any excluded entities, and explain the business reason for each exclusion.
  • Summarize financing and recapitalization history, capital structure, and current liquidity condition.
  • Explain the causes of distress using specific operational and financial facts.
  • Describe any loyalty, customer, or similar program, the associated liability channels, and why the entity or program is included or excluded.
  • Summarize franchise or other material operating agreements, note any assumption or assignment constraints, and flag outstanding improvement or covenant obligations.
  • Assess workforce needs, layoff or reduction exposure, and payroll continuity issues.
  • Flag tax remittance, insurance, deposit, and contingent liability issues that the first-day motions should address.

• Cash-management motion:

  • Explain the prepetition cash architecture and why the existing system should continue temporarily.
  • Identify accounts, signatories, transfer pathways, and any intercompany sweep or funding mechanics.
  • Preserve intercompany claims and avoid language that could imply waiver, subordination, or consolidation.
  • Connect the proposed relief to ongoing payroll, vendor payments, guest/refund processing, and tax remittances if applicable.

• DIP-financing motion:

  • State the financing need, source, permitted uses, protections requested, and case budget discipline.
  • Identify the linkage between the financing and the debtor’s immediate operational runway.
  • Address any roll-up, priming, lien, or budget-variance concepts only if they appear in the source set and are actually sought.
  • Explain the necessity of the facility in relation to cash collateral, existing liquidity, or the absence of viable alternatives.

• Wages-and-employee motion:

  • Distinguish prepetition wage exposure from postpetition payroll needs.
  • Address benefit continuation, reimbursement practices, and any PTO, severance, or expense-reimbursement handling raised by the facts.
  • If payroll taxes or similar trust-fund obligations are involved, flag the responsible-person exposure and the need for orderly remittance.
  • If workforce reductions are contemplated, identify the operational timing and notice implications.

• Utilities motion:

  • Identify each utility category or provider type separately if the record distinguishes them.
  • Tie the proposed deposit, assurance, or other treatment to the debtor’s historic usage and current payment behavior.
  • Explain the operational consequence of service interruption and why continuity is essential at the outset of the case.

• Critical-vendors motion:

  • Define the vendor categories with operational specificity, not just labels.
  • Describe why each vendor is critical, what service or supply it supports, and what would happen if it stopped.
  • Limit the requested payment or treatment to what is needed to secure continued performance.
  • Explain how the proposed relief fits within the debtor’s broader first-day stabilization plan.

• For every motion, begin with a short background section that cross-references the CRO declaration, then present the legal standard, the case-specific facts, the requested relief, and a proposed order as an exhibit or attachment.

• For every legal proposition used in the motion, cite the controlling statute, rule, or doctrine by name and section or rule number.

• If the source materials identify multiple entities, programs, obligations, or counterparties, run the analysis separately for each and keep the resulting requests aligned with the record.

5. Vertical / structural / temporal relationships

• Preserve the hierarchy between the declaration and the motions: the declaration supplies the factual record; the motions convert that record into requested relief.
• Preserve the hierarchy within the motions: legal standard first, then case-specific facts, then necessity and scope of relief.
• Track temporal status carefully: prepetition obligations, first-day/postpetition requests, interim versus final relief, and ongoing operational requirements should not be blurred together.
• If a motion depends on a later event, hearing, or deadline, anchor the requested relief to that milestone rather than using vague urgency language.
• Keep operational relationships explicit: payroll depends on cash management, cash management depends on bank access and intercompany mechanics, utilities and vendors depend on payment continuity, and financing supports all of the above.
• If a fact appears in one document and is relied on elsewhere, repeat it consistently and do not alter the number, date, or characterization across filings.

6. Output structure conventions

• Produce the package as separate, court-ready documents with file-specific content for each deliverable.
• The CRO declaration should read as a sworn narrative with factual headings and exhibit references where helpful.
• Each motion should contain:
  • title and introductory relief summary,
  • background tied to the declaration,
  • legal standard with cited authority,
  • case-specific facts,
  • requested relief,
  • proposed order language or an attached proposed order.
• Use motion-specific prose, not a generic omnibus memo, and keep the requested relief bounded to the facts in the record.
• Include exhibit placeholders where needed for proposed orders or schedules, but do not invent facts that are not supported by the source documents.
• Before finalizing, verify that each file is complete, non-empty, and contains operative filing language rather than only a description of the intended filing.
• Confirm that the declaration and all five motions are internally consistent on names, entity scope, dates, and financial figures.