LPT: Before hiring a bankruptcy attorney, look up their…
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LPT: Before hiring a bankruptcy attorney, look up their track record for free on the federal court database. Some have 80%+ dismissal rates.
The federal court system has a free search tool called PACER Case Locator (pcl.uscourts.gov). You can search any bankruptcy attorney by name and pull every case they've ever filed -- what type, what happened, how long it lasted. It exports to a spreadsheet.
Chapter 13 bankruptcy plans run 3-5 years. The national completion rate is around 33-40%, so some failure is normal. But when you see an attorney with an 80-90% dismissal rate compared to colleagues in the same courthouse doing 50%, that's not bad luck.
There's also a federal rule that bars discharge if you filed too recently. It's simple date math. Some attorneys file these cases anyway. The client pays $3,500-$5,000, makes months of payments into a plan that could never have worked, and doesn't find out until it's too late. The attorney already collected the retainer.
How to check:
1. Go to pcl.uscourts.gov http://pcl.uscourts.gov
2. Search by attorney name under "Party/Attorney Search"
3. Download the case list
4. Sort by disposition -- count dismissals vs. completions
5. Compare to other attorneys in the same court
**Takes about 10 minutes. The data has been public for years. Nobody tells you to look.**
#entertainment
The federal court system has a free search tool called PACER Case Locator (pcl.uscourts.gov). You can search any bankruptcy attorney by name and pull every case they've ever filed -- what type, what happened, how long it lasted. It exports to a spreadsheet.
Chapter 13 bankruptcy plans run 3-5 years. The national completion rate is around 33-40%, so some failure is normal. But when you see an attorney with an 80-90% dismissal rate compared to colleagues in the same courthouse doing 50%, that's not bad luck.
There's also a federal rule that bars discharge if you filed too recently. It's simple date math. Some attorneys file these cases anyway. The client pays $3,500-$5,000, makes months of payments into a plan that could never have worked, and doesn't find out until it's too late. The attorney already collected the retainer.
How to check:
1. Go to pcl.uscourts.gov http://pcl.uscourts.gov
2. Search by attorney name under "Party/Attorney Search"
3. Download the case list
4. Sort by disposition -- count dismissals vs. completions
5. Compare to other attorneys in the same court
**Takes about 10 minutes. The data has been public for years. Nobody tells you to look.**
#entertainment
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