Pacer?

[demismom]

Does anyone have any instructions on how to read up on a particular attorney? I think I remember someone suggesting this to someone and since I've not been feeling very comfortable with our attorney as of late, I thought I'd check up on her.

[SinkingFast]

http://www.bankruptcyforum.com/showthread.php?t=1011

Follow the instructions I posted at the end of the Thread, until you get to the Query page. Don't enter your BK case number on the Query page.

On the Query page, you can enter your attny's name. I found just using the Last Name works well. Sometimes attnys start out using their name one way and then change later in their career. For example, James Thomas Jones may have started out as James Jones and then switched to using James T. Jones.

Then for Type, select Attorney in the drop down menu.

Next page, you'll get a list of attnys filing in your Court with that last name. If your attny has a unique name, there may only be a few listings. If your attny has a common name like Smith, you may see a lot of different "Smiths" to choose from.

Once you select your attny's name and click on that link, the next page will show all the cases your attny has filed over their career.

Be aware,............... If your attny has been in business for 20-30 years, the list can be extensive. And that can mean your attny's client list can be 20, 30, even 40 pages or more as charged out by PACER. And then each case you access is gonna be a lot of pages as well. Just doing a little research on an attny, you can easily run up $30-$50 in no time flat.

One suggestion,............. Try to be sure to go far enough back in time that cases will be closed or Confirmed. When you're looking at the attny's list of cases filed, you'll be looking at people's names. There's no way to know, until you access the file, if the people filed Ch 7 or Ch 13.

[demismom]

Thanx! Now, once I've got the case up that I want to look at, what should I be clicking on to get a good sense of what this attorney is like?

[demismom]

bump - just curious what exactly I should be looking at to give me that will tell me if my attorney is good/bad/indifferent??????????

[SinkingFast]

Probably your best bet would be to look at the History/Documents. That will show you step by step progression in a case.

You also wanna keep in mind to look back far enough in time that a case should have progressed. A simple, No Asset, Ch 7 would be in the 90-120 day range. A Ch 13,....... maybe 6 months to be Confirmed and making regular payments.

If you pick cases that were filed too soon ago, potential problems may not show up due to having to plod thru the Court system. For example,........ A Ch 7 case that gets flagged by the UST's Office for an Extension just prior to the Last Day for Objections.

You'd be looking for Ch 7 cases filed between the middle of December, '07 and the middle of January, '07. Those should be close to or Discharged by now. For Ch 13 cases, possibly bump that back to middle of October, '06.

[demismom]

Thank you Sinking! I was only looking at cases that were actually closed and the history/documents, but wasn't really sure WHAT I was looking for. LOL