A number of local law firms — some headquartered in Nashville, others with prominent offices here — are featured on BTI Consulting Group's recently published BTI Brand Elite ranking of top firms as seen by in-house counsel at many of the world's largest companies. Making the list are locally based firms Bass Berry & Sims and Waller. Ranked firms headquartered elsewhere but with a solid presence here include Adams and Reese, Baker Donelson, Bradley Arant Boult Cummings, Burr & Forman, Butler Snow, Frost Brown Todd, Nelson Mullins, Ogletree Deakins, Pillsbury Winthrop and Stites & Harbison.

The consultants' list — check out an executive summary here — features more than 200 firms that score well on recommendations, value delivered and innovation. Of note: The BTI team, which interviewed more than 500 in-house attorneys, did not prompt the lawyers with firm names. All mentions were unsolicited.

Lynda Hill, a member in Frost Brown Todd’s Nashville office, has been named chair of the firm’s Litigation Technology Advisory Committee, which takes the lead on developing and building the firm's e-discovery services. Hill, who joined Frost Brown Todd from Miller & Martin last year and focuses on products liability and business litigation, will help identify and recommend e-discovery educational programs for firm staff and attorneys. Earlier this year, she also was named to Frost Brown Todd’s Women’s Initiative Steering Committee.

Back in the dark days of the recession, a good number of banks never showed just how quickly their loan portfolios were deteriorating because of what came to be known as "extend and pretend" — the practice of tweaking loan terms so that stretched borrowers didn't have to throw up their hands and banks didn't have to recognize another nonperforming credit. Noted local attorney Bob Mendes at Frost Brown Todd says we may now be seeing the logical next chapter in that story.

Our look inside the Q2 numbers at local community banks earlier this week showed that nonperforming loans aren't fading from the system as quickly as they probably should three years after the Great Recession officially ended. Here's Mendes' thinking: Those extend-and-pretend loans from 2009 are now being addressed by special-asset bankers who have finished triaging the worst performers. Bit by bit, loans that were until now classified as healthy — even though they weren't — are now moving to their rightful place on banks' books. In the process, we're all getting a slightly more representative — and somewhat less optimistic — picture of the local banking sector.

One last thought courtesy of Mendes: 2013 will bring more worries for many bankers as loans made right before the crisis in 2008 come due. Those agreements were written when collateral values were at their peak. Refinancing them next year will be no picnic and could again lift noncurrent loan ratios.