How To Choose an Attorney

[crazycat]

...I live in Texas and will be filing personal chapter 7 soon..I am self employed, maintain assets to run a business (LLC) which is a sole means of support for myself & family. What criteria should I use in choosing a "Good" attorney? Should they be bankruptcy specialists (only practice bankruptcy), board certified?..Do I choose One who has the biggest yellow page ad? Is there a minimum time in practice that I should look for? How Do I avoid the attorneys who just file forms and do little else? Any Suggestions are welcome. Thanks

[gophermn]

Some might differ in here but if I could step back and hire an attny I would have looked for one who is also a Trustee. This way if my attny/trustee knows I am able to stay a CH7 and a no asset I would feel a bit more comfortable. Not saying my current attny is slacking because thus far he has done great!
Originally I had a (lack of a better word) derelict attny who basically took my money and sat on the paperwork for almost 60+ days. They were SO backlogged they were pushing 40-50 filings a week. So STAY AWAY from the BK Attorney mills. Not worth it.

Make sure your attorney will communicate via email. I would say 80% of our conversations are done through email. Find out if you need to pay extra if the attny has to do extra work (i.e. hearings via CH7 or CH13), make sure the attny communicates and allows you to review petitions before filing.

Good luck!

[Flamingo]

I always suggest that one call their State Bar Association (in your phone book under the "State" section) for a reputable referral in your area.

[HHM]

I always suggest that one call their State Bar Association (in your phone book under the "State" section) for a reputable referral in your area.

An FYI for State Bar referrals...the state bar does not actually vet (in a meaningful way) the attorneys who participate in their lawyer referral services. In most states, the State Bar referral service functions like any other referral service, the attorneys pay to participate. Basically, when you call the state bar, they will have a list of attorneys who registered to receive referrals for a particular practice area...the person at the state bar simply gives you the name and number of the next attorney on the list.

[Flamingo]

An FYI for State Bar referrals...the state bar does not actually vet (in a meaningful way) the attorneys who participate in their lawyer referral services. In most states, the State Bar referral service functions like any other referral service, the attorneys pay to participate. Basically, when you call the state bar, they will have a list of attorneys who registered to receive referrals for a particular practice area...the person at the state bar simply gives you the name and number of the next attorney on the list.

Through your State Bar Association, you will not end up with the Clown from Discount Legal who will take your retainer and you'll never hear from him/her again. It's better than picking out the biggest ad in the phone book. Another step is if you have a family attorney who handled doing your Will or House Settlement for a referral, they are a good start. He/She usually has lots of buddies in the law business and can give someone a decent referral if one cannot find an attorney on their own. Using the Bar Association is the best way to avoid a conflict of any kind as to obtaining a decent attorney, especially if one is new to their area and don't know where to start. Our attorney referral came from one of my former bosses (lawyer) who did not handle bankruptcy but was a long-term family friend. He made a few phone calls and called us back with a name. I then called our Bar Association and found out this attorney was tops in our State in handling BKs. We never had any regrets about retaining him.

[Mystik101]

Attorney....

Crazycat, What part of Texas do you live in? I am in the Round Rock / Austin area and my attorney has been absolutely incredible. She also handles the San Antonio area. I filed using federal exemptions, as I am fairly new in Texas. She is extremely knowledgable and answers emails within a day. I am extremely happy with her. Let me know if you are interested and I will give you her info.
Good luck!

[HHM]

Through your State Bar Association, you will not end up with the Clown from Discount Legal who will take your retainer and you'll never hear from him/her again.

Frankly, that does not happen too often. No attorney can stay in business doing that.

I am merely informing people about how most state bar referral systems work so they are fully informed. State Bars, for the most part, do NOT endorse the QUALITY of an attorney. Keep in mind, any "licensed" attorney, as far as the state is concerned, is a fully qualified attorney.

[PaKettle]

...I live in Texas and will be filing personal chapter 7 soon..I am self employed, maintain assets to run a business (LLC) which is a sole means of support for myself & family. What criteria should I use in choosing a "Good" attorney? Should they be bankruptcy specialists (only practice bankruptcy), board certified?..Do I choose One who has the biggest yellow page ad? Is there a minimum time in practice that I should look for? How Do I avoid the attorneys who just file forms and do little else? Any Suggestions are welcome. Thanks

A personal referral from someone who has used him/her and liked him/her is the best.

Lacking that, it's tough to really know.

Some people have had good results with www.nacba.com attorneys.

There is a thread on "how to hire an attorney" that has some good ideas.

Some talk a good game and then when they get your money they are hard to communicate with and/ or drop the ball in other ways.

Email communication is sometimes better because they can access it from court, or wherever they are (if they want to). Seems that many with attorneys who use email have reported good results. Mine did not use it and I had problems getting ahold of him.

You want someone who does something like at least 25-40 cases per year and who does only bankruptcy or maybe only bankruptcy and one other thing, such as divorce. You don't want someone who does 20+ cases a month. Just my opinion.

[Keebler]

Here's something I put together for a relative and posted here almost a year ago. I haven't re-read it to see if it makes sense, but take a look...

[live link deleted by moderator]

[lrprn]

[live link deleted by moderator]

Keeb, the current forum rules now prohibit posting information about specific attorneys (good or bad) here in the forums. You have a long list of specifically named San Antonio attorneys listed in your document - that's why I deleted your link.

If you would like to 'scrub' your document of all the specific lawyer names and information and repost it, that's fine.

[Keebler]

Keeb, the current forum rules now prohibit posting information about specific attorneys (good or bad) here in the forums. You have a long list of specifically named San Antonio attorneys listed in your document - that's why I deleted your link.

If you would like to 'scrub' your document of all the specific lawyer names and information and repost it, that's fine.

The document your refer to consists ENTIRELY of specific laywer names and information. It's a statistical analysis of EVERY attorney who appeared on the court calender in the San Antonio area representing chapter 7 or 13 cases over a six month period.

To "scrub" the document of all of the specific laywer names would render it completely meaningless and useless.

The link I provided was to a BKforum thread that already exists under General Bankruptcy Talk. Anyone can search for "San Antonio area BK Attorney Selection Guide" and find it there until it gets deleted by a moderator.

[FreshLikeADaisy]

I stayed up until 2:00 AM the other night to help a relative in San Antonio find a good BK Attorney by using statistics from the court calender like I had done for myself. The goal is to avoid the giant Bankruptcy mills, the Chapter 13 pushers and anyone who's got too few cases to have a good level of expertise.

I downloaded 100+ web pages worth of court calender data and ended up with a spreadsheet of raw data just over 25,000 lines long. The court calender records were available for the first six months of 2007 and provide a good picture of who's who and what's what in court. I broke down the data to arrive at a list of attorneys that had ever appeared in court representing Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 cases. Duplicate entries were eliminated so that only individual cases were counted even if they appeared in court multiple times. In the end there was just over 2,500 unique cases seen in court over the six month period.

It seems like a shame for all of the hard work to go to wasted, so I'm posting my statistics here so that others can use it too. I'm sure things will change as time goes on, but these statistics should paint a pretty reliable picture for months to come....[snip]

(quoted from original post; I'm not including names so I hope it will be okay)

Dude, what a GREAT idea! I'm only disgusted because I didn't think of it first... *laugh*

Seriously, you did with a downloaded court calendar in minutes what I did in an afternoon at my courthouse searching PACER (free at the courthouse, which is why I went). Sure, I got a good deal more info (like how many dismissals a given atty got and for what reasons) but the basics you just achieved much more simply.

Anyone in any area that has downloadable court calendar info (many do, from what I've seen) can do the same, with a tiny little bit of expertise in Excel or Access.

I stand in awe, Keeb. GREAT idea.

[FreshLikeADaisy]

P.S. If you feel like throwing in technical specifics of how you did it (like file format you downloaded, what you did in Excel or Access, etc.) I'd love to read it. Because basically, you just created a process for whittling down attys in any area of practice... I'd love to have this tool handy as needed.

I'm not saying step by step, intensely detailed user manual instructions; if someone doesn't already have familiarity with spreadsheets and databases you can't teach it in a post. Just enough of an overview to where someone who's technical could figger it out very easily. Thanks!!!

[DivorceRuinedMe]

https://www.martindalehubble.com

Look for AV rated attorneys. That's how I found mine and I've been pretty happy with her so far (aside from some clerical errors in my petition that caused a bit of trouble, she's been pretty good to me).

[Keebler]

P.S. If you feel like throwing in technical specifics of how you did it (like file format you downloaded, what you did in Excel or Access, etc.) I'd love to read it. Because basically, you just created a process for whittling down attys in any area of practice... I'd love to have this tool handy as needed.

I'm not saying step by step, intensely detailed user manual instructions; if someone doesn't already have familiarity with spreadsheets and databases you can't teach it in a post. Just enough of an overview to where someone who's technical could figger it out very easily. Thanks!!!

Thanks for the kind words. The process was painful and slow and it defies rational explanation. In fact, it was an irrational act to want to consider EVERY case for the entire six months. I was able to sample cases with PACER and it was slow going and spotty because of the limited number of cases I was willing to look at. I did run a $25 report on PACER to capture all of the cases in my area but it didn't include the attorney names. Grabbing the results from the court calenders was kind of not my first choice but it was free and it had all the information I wanted. It was obsessive and kind of nerdy and a rather big challenge that was gratifying to solve.

I recall using the search function on the court's website to find all of the archived court calenders. I opened each one and simply copied and pasted in to Excel with HTML and all. From past experience I knew I would re-arrange the data by sorting and making Excel formulas to parse the results. Capturing one page of results was going to be no more difficult this way than capturing all of them.

The only way to describe the process is one of writing a formula to strip a particular chunk of data from each line and then sorting the results. With the results sorted I'd delete the lines (like blank ones) and then go to work with a new formula to reduce the remaining lines.

The hardest part is stripping out blank lines and merging information that is wrapped on to seperate lines. Again it defies explanation but consists of writing a new formula to re-arrange the data based on patterns. (Like, Every five lines is a new record and the beginning of a record starts with a particular word or format.)

My favorite Excel trick is writing a formula to break apart or merge some information and displaying the changed results in a new column. The problem with the results is that they are still formulas and changing the cells the formulas are based on changes the results. There's times when I want to "lock in" the results of the calculation and turn each cell in to a value as if I had typed it in. It's done by selecting all of the cells with calculated results you intend to keep and then select "copy". To convert them to permanent values instead of the forumla, select "Paste Special" from the Edit Menu and the check the "Values" box. With this trick you can calculate and kind of series or values you can imagine a formula for and then convert them to cells with values as if you had types them all yourself.

Feel free to send me a Private Message if you'd like more nerdy information that would bore normal people.