Law Firm & # of BK Cases in this Court

[ApresMoi]

I want to know how many BK cases a particular law firm has brought before a particular bankruptcy court within the past 6 months (or year). How do I find this out?

[BKDefender]

create an account on pacer (pacer.uscourts.gov), then click on 'Links to pacer websites' and go to the website for your particular district's BK court, login, click on 'Query', put in the attorney's last name and first name in the respective boxes, select 'Attorney' next to 'Type', enter the date range, and hit 'Run Query'.

You'll have to do one for each attorney at the firm that you think files BK cases because the cases are indexed under the attorney name not firm name.
It costs 8cents per page of results that you get so if they get a LOT, then you could pay up to the maximum of $2.40 for the search since pacer usually maxes the charge at 30 pages regardless of the document/response length.

--William

[ApresMoi]

Great! Thank you...

[catleg]

You may want to limit your search to some reasonable time sample, like a year.

Also some lawyers are bankruptcy trustees (like mine), he has over 9000 cases.

[HHM]

Problem is, number of cases filed has a diminishing usefulness and really is not that useful of a statistic. Catleg is right, you need to limit it to a period of time, otherwise, you could end up with a $200 PACER bill.

Consider this, an attorney that files 200 simple chapter 7 cases is in no way a better (and probably worse) attorney than an attorney that has filed 20 chapter 13's and 30 complex chapter 7's.

Frankly, ApresMoi, you are becoming too obsessed over the attorney issue. Ultimately, you need the hit the pavement, meet with attorney's IN PERSON, and go with the one you feel most comfortable with.
See this BlogPost on what questions to ask and understanding the BK industry

http://askmethner.com/?p=609

[BCA2009]

My attorney told me up front that he only takes Chap 7 cases and he only takes cases he will win. I believed him on the Chap 7 part, but thought the "always win" part might be a little exageration. I looked up on pacer and he closed 70 cases since 1/1/2009. All were Chap 7 and all were discharged. I got tired of looking after that.

I am over the median so a little nervous of the 341, but I do feel better knowing my attorney's client acceptance practices and batting average.