Meet Our Instructors

John Bedard
Bedard Law Group, P.C.

John H. Bedard, Jr. is the managing attorney of Bedard Law Group, P.C. located in Atlanta, Georgia. John represents creditors, asset buyers, and debt collectors helping them stay in compliance with state and federal law. He also manages the nationwide litigation for several collection agencies and focuses his litigation practice on FDCPA, TCPA, and FCRA defense. John’s practice also focuses on defending regulatory actions including CFPB investigations and travels the country performing CFPB readiness assessments for the collection industry.

Rick Perr
Kaufman Dolowich Voluck

Rick Perr is the Co-Managing Partner of the Philadelphia office of the national law firm Kaufman Dolowich & Voluck, LLP. He also chairs the firm’s national Consumer Financial Services Practice Group. Rick concentrates his practice in complex commercial litigation and professional liability defense. He is a nationally recognized authority and lecturer on creditor’s rights, representing creditors, law firms and agencies against individual and class action allegations invoking federal and state consumer protection laws, including the FDCPA, the FCRA and the TCPA. Rick also advises entities and individuals on matters related to compliance in the credit and collection industry, including review, implementation and auditing of policies and procedures, especially in adherence with governmental regulatory bodies such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Colin Winkler

Colin Winkler, currently corporate counsel for ACA International—the accounts-receivable management industry’s trade association—has a diverse set of legal and professional expertise. He has worked as a financial crimes consultant with Wells Fargo Bank, where he investigated potential money laundering in the context of the Venezuelan currency crisis in 2019; an attorney-editor with Thomson Reuters’ statutes editorial team, where he led early research on the California Consumer Privacy Act; a paralegal supervisor and business operations manager for CACI International at the U.S. Department of Justice, Tax Division, where he worked hand-in-hand with DOJ attorneys to enforce civil tax liabilities through litigation in federal courts; and a collections and creditors’ rights attorney in solo practice and at a small firm in northern Virginia.

Michael L. Frost
Malone Frost Martin PLLC

Mike is a partner at Malone Frost Martin PLLC, a boutique firm with a national presence. He leads the firm’s regulatory, compliance and virtual general counsel services. Mike provides counsel, consultation, complex transactional and litigation defense services to collection agencies, law firms, credit reporting agencies, data providers, creditors and various other businesses focused the Account Receivable Management (ARM) industry. Mike has represented companies through examinations and civil investigation demands conducted by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Conference of State Bank Supervisors and various other regulatory entities.


Chad Echols
The Echols Firm, LLC

Chad Echols is the founding attorney of The Echols Firm, LLC in Rock Hill, SC. His firm’s practice focuses on the FDCPA, FCRA, TCPA, compliance for collection agencies and debt purchasers, business law, litigation, and commercial collections. He is a member of the South Carolina Bar Association, ACA International, Association of Credit and Collection Professionals where he currently serves as the South Carolina State Chair for the association.