Pro Se stats in California (very small minority)

[bornfree2]

From this 2018 report "Self-Represented Litigants and the Court" - by Central District BK Court in California

There are stats all over the doc, but my cursory gleaning was

(page 7-9)

- 16% of BK7 filings in CA are Pro Se, vs 84% attorney
- 36% dismissed for incomplete filing by pro se

- attorney got 94% discharge
- self got 84%

(page 11) from 2014-2018, pro se's got:

- standard discharge given to 82% of electronic self filers vs 63% to paper filers
- dismissed because of failure to file info (3% electronic , 17% paper filers)
- dismissed because of not paying fee (3% electronic, 16% paper)
- dismissed other reasons (5% electronic, 3% paper)

(page 25)

Since its inception in 2014 through the end of 2018, the total number of chapter 7 bankruptcy cases prepared using eSR reached 892. Use of eSR declined from 307 filings in 2017 to 105 filings in 2018

On average every quarter sees 80-100 electronic self filers. I wonder if these stats will blow up due to covid and courts being closed so long

So my analysis is that Pro Se Chapter 7 filings are very small percentage of the paper being moved in BK court.
And an important cause for failure is mistakes in the filing, not paying fees, etc

[debtprison]

That's a lot better than I expected. I always figured that Pro Se filers were more often just filing emergency petitions to get a temporary automatic stay. FWIW I have two past C7's as a Pro Se debtor, both with discharges.

[flashoflight]

Chapter 13 have a lot of pro se pre-COVID. Husband files ch13 on his own to stop foreclosure. Then wife files ch13 on her own to stop foreclosure on the same house. Then husband files ch13 #2, then wife ch13 #2, and so on. The number of BK filings have gone down a lot since March 2020. There is UBI in the form of extended unemployment, stimulus, and free rent funded by landlords and mortgage lenders.

[justbroke]

There are a lot of people that try to use the automatic stay provisions in a Chapter 13 to protect property from foreclosure. This is specifically why the "serial filer" provisions were added to the bankruptcy code modifications in 2005 (BAPCPA).