In the past few years, bankruptcy law has grown by leaps and bounds, even though filing for bankruptcy is as easy as filling out a few forms. Misconceptions, scary news stories, and misleading ads from many of the firms that now only do bankruptcy law have led the average consumer to believe that they have to hire an expensive lawyer to get rid of their debts.
An experienced lawyer should be able to handle a bankruptcy claim from start to finish in a few hours, even if the client has more questions than usual or a more complicated mix of income, debt, and assets than most. Some honest lawyers only charge their clients for this small amount of work, but most charge at least $2,000 for a simple filing. In fact, in some places, a single case can cost as much as $10,000!
Many honest lawyers have stopped practising bankruptcy because of these inflated prices. Once a client is told that bankruptcy should cost them thousands of dollars, they are naturally hesitant to hire anyone who charges much less.
Most of the time, bankruptcy paperwork is so easy to fill out that lawyers have their secretaries do it. But some greedy lawyers have made so much money in this field that they don't tell their clients this. Instead, they keep the money and watch as the number of people filing for bankruptcy gets out of hand.
No matter what got you into your current financial situation, filing for bankruptcy should never be your first choice when you have a lot of debt. Even with high attorney fees and new laws that make it easier to use credit cards, it would be much better for you in the short and long term if your financial problems were handled outside of court.
