While the precise nature of Dewey & LeBoeuf‘s inevitable demise remains to be seen, several creditors owed millions of dollars aren’t waiting around to find out how the story ends. 

Three of the four banks that extended a $100 million line of credit to the now-crippled law firm have sold their portions of the debt, according to a source familiar with the matter. Those lenders—Citi Private Bank, Bank of America, and HSBC—were part of a consortium led by J.P. Morgan Chase that was collectively owed a reported $75 million as Dewey collapsed. It was unclear Thursday who bought the banks’ Dewey debt and at what price. Representatives from all four of the firm’s lenders declined to comment when contacted by The Am Law Daily.

As of April, Dewey owed about $36 million to J.P. Morgan, according to a second source familiar with the debt (that number may have dropped since then with the collection of accounts receivables). J.P. Morgan is the only one of the four banks to have filed a lien under the Uniform Commercial Code with the New York State Department of State, a routine step before a bankruptcy, according to bankruptcy specialists, that essentially publicizes a secured interest a creditor has against a company.

Between the bank debt and the proceeds of at least $125 million in bonds it sold in 2010—with J.P. Morgan serving as the placement agent—Dewey has a combined total of $235 million “give or take” in secured debt, according to William Brandt of Development Specialists Inc., a restructuring and financial advisory firm that until recently was playing a lead role in advising what remains of Dewey.

As previously reported by The Am Law Daily, Dewey retained DSI in early April, but the restructuring firm has seen its role diminished over the past few weeks as the firm’s debt trades hands and new creditors come into play.

Brandt tells The Am Law Daily that following a meeting earlier this month in which he laid out what he saw as Dewey’s current situation, the lenders at the time convened and decided to hire their own firm, Zolfo Cooper, to take the restructuring reins as of last week. DSI is still providing “transitional services” and expects to do so for several more weeks, according to Brandt. (News of Zolfo’s hiring was first reported by The Wall Street Journal; A Zolfo Cooper representative did not return calls seeking comment.)

“The quickest way to say this with some diplomacy is that the environment at Dewey was changing on an hourly basis,” Brandt says. “As the debt began to trade substantially . . . there were different strategies the new lenders wanted to adopt.”

Brandt, whose company has advised on more than two dozen law firm failures, says he has never seen a bank sell its interest under similar circumstances. At the same time, he adds, the amount of money involved in Dewey’s collapse is much greater than what was at stake, for instance, when Washington, D.C.–based Howrey dissolved last year after 55 years and was pushed into bankruptcy. “The debt here is worth trading,” he says. (Citi Private Bank, one of the three Dewey lenders to shed its share of that firm’s debt, continues to be a secured creditor in the Howrey bankruptcy, in which it is owed roughly $40 million, according to court filings.)