Lucas Ruffing is returning to his Delaware roots to open a law practice in the downtown area on Jan. 21. Ruffing will be renting office space from another local attorney.

Ruffing will continue with his primary focus on bankruptcy law, as well as criminal law, estate planning and wills, and consumer protection.

For the past three years, Ruffing has worked for a large downtown Columbus bankruptcy law firm. During those years, he filed more than 500 chapter 7 and chapter 13 cases, and represented more than a thousand debtors at their bankruptcy court hearings.

After coming up through the Delaware City School system and graduating from Delaware Hayes High School in 2006, Ruffing stayed in central Ohio and graduated with an accounting degree from The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business in 2010, and a Juris Doctorate from Ohio State’s Moritz College of Law in 2013.

During his tenure at Hayes from 2002-2006, he played football, basketball, track and tennis. Academically, he finished near the top of his class.

Ruffing is the youngest of the four sons of long-time Delaware residents Pete and Jeannine Ruffing. Pete Ruffing worked as a Delaware prosecuting attorney from 1985-2013, and Jeannine Ruffing worked as a physical therapist at Grady Memorial Hospital from 1995-2014. Both remain active members of the community.

“I’m excited to re-join the every day community, and bring the many unknown, and often misunderstood, benefits of the federal bankruptcy laws to Delaware residents struggling with bills and dealing with predatory creditors,” Ruffing said in a news release.