Seeing is Believing

If you are filing a personal bankruptcy for yourself or for a married couple we are the absolute best choice for quality that you can make by far. No one even comes close. Here is how the alternatives stack up.

 

People often ask us why we recommend getting advice from an attorney when the trustee meeting only lasts a minute or so and when there is probably no compelling role for the attorney to play at the meeting. We do so for two reasons. The first is that we are required to and the second is that there are those people who are by nature very fearful and need someone to hold their hands. If you are one of those people, just being able to breathe more easily may well be worth paying up to $1,500 for an attorney.

If you are going to hire an attorney, there a few things to keep in mind. From a purely business stand point, the $1,200 and more you can expect to pay an attorney is not arbitrary or accidental. It derives from the fact that most attorneys charge from $250 to about $400 per hour and when you factor that a good bankruptcy attorney could spend four to six hours on your case, then $1,500 begins to look like a bargain.

Most bankruptcy attorneys will not quote you a price over the phone and those who advertise teaser rates of say, $599 usually do not tell you upfront that it could be more than double that.

In one large city, an attorney bankruptcy ad reads "Bankruptcy $25 to start" but when you go to see him ask and for the $25 price, his price jumps to about $1,250. He insists that you must list all your creditors including your grandmother, or else it is not going to work. We asked him what  the $25 was for and he said it was for one creditor.  Then we asked about two creditors and his price jumped to $595, and when we asked about five creditors, it jumped to over $800, and when we asked about ten creditors, like most people have, his price jumped to $1,250. Obviously you can see that he had no intention of doing any bankruptcy for less that $1,000.

This same game playing applies to Chapter 13 bankruptcies. A bankruptcy attorney could easily get $3,000 and more for a Chapter 13 bankruptcy even though his ad could say only $795. That is because the system allows attorneys to get paid from the back end too, in addition to the upfront fee they charge.

The Chapter 13 attorney could charge you a low $595 to start a Chapter 13 but get paid out of the monthly payments that you send the trustee for as much as $3,000 or more. There is nothing crooked or corrupt about this and it can be argued that trustees, many of whom are also bankruptcy attorneys, are fair arbiters notwithstanding the apparent conflict of interest.

If you are going only for a free consultation in order to get answers to your bankruptcy questions, then it does not matter how much the attorney charges. Just make sure you actually see the attorney, not just his secretary, and leave your checkbook at home. On the other hand, if you really want to hire an attorney...

Watch Out for Attorneys Who Will Not Tell You Their Price Over The Phone. It Is Usually an Indication That They Might Charge Over $1,200.

 

Did you miss the bit about appearance attorneys? If you did, here it is. In most large cities, there are what are called appearance attorneys. These are attorneys who do not want the hassle of representing anyone or of even maintaining a practice. In the bankruptcy arena, these individuals hire themselves out to other bankruptcy attorneys who feed them their court appearance work.

Here is how it works. Let's say that you hire a bankruptcy attorney and pay her $1,250. She knows that it is a waste of her time to personally type your documents so she turns it over to her unlicensed secretary to type. When it is done and filed, she hires an appearance or contract attorney to show up at the trustee meeting in her stead. You probably would guess that she would pay the appearance attorney at least $300 for taking her place, right? Wrong. She would most likely pay the appearance attorney a mere $25 to $50 and that's it.

But before you start to feel sorry for the poor appearance attorney, consider that especially in bankruptcy, many appearance attorneys practically live at the courthouse making appearances for one attorney after the other, sometimes as many as 10 or 20 times in one day. It makes sense if the appearance lasts a minute or two and looking at it that way, $25 per minute is not bad if you have enough of them lined up.

In economics 101 they say that the value of something is what people are will to pay for it. You may want to keep the appearance fee in mind when you try to estimate the value of having an attorney appear with you at the trustee meeting.

When you give us your bills, we will prepare,

• All 40 or more pages of your complete bankruptcy documents prepared by experienced bankruptcy preparers.

• They are court ready, so all you do is sign them and turn them in. You could even file them by mail to save yourself a trip to the court. We provide the court addresses too.

• You do not need to leave the convenience and privacy of your home to come to an office hours away. You just fill out our easy online questionnaire and that's it.

• You do not need to take time off from work as you would if you hired an attorney. Why take time off from work repeatedly just to go see an attorney?

• Our questionnaire allows you to save your information as you enter them. This is a great time saver because it means that if you have many bills, you do not need to enter them all at once. You can take a few days to enter them all.

• We are just about the only way to get your documents prepared in one day. If you hire an attorney or paralegal, you can expect to wait a few weeks to get the documents done.

• Unlike attorneys and bankruptcy bills, you do not pay per creditor. Many attorneys and paralegals charge you a la carte and that could add up very quickly.

• We also give you a written guarantee.

 

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