Can I file bankruptcy if I can't afford an attorney?

Yes. You can file pro se (without an attorney), apply for a fee waiver to eliminate the filing fee, or pay the filing fee in installments. Some legal aid organizations also provide free bankruptcy assistance.

Are there hidden fees in bankruptcy?

The main costs are the filing fee, attorney fee, and credit counseling courses (about $20-50 total). Some attorneys charge extra for adversary proceedings or plan modifications, so ask for a complete fee breakdown upfront.

What is the cheapest way to file bankruptcy?

The cheapest option is filing pro se with a fee waiver, which costs nothing. If you hire an attorney, Chapter 7 is generally less expensive than Chapter 13. Always compare quotes from multiple attorneys.

Can I pay bankruptcy attorney fees in installments?

Most bankruptcy attorneys accept payment plans. In Chapter 13, attorney fees can even be paid through your repayment plan. In Chapter 7, many attorneys require full payment before filing, but installment arrangements are common.

What is the Open Bankruptcy Project?

The Open Bankruptcy Project is a nonprofit research and transparency initiative that publishes free bankruptcy data, free tools for filers and legal aid organizations, and analyses of system-level outcomes. The project collects docket information from the federal PACER system and reorganizes it into searchable, downloadable datasets covering every U.S. bankruptcy court. Tools include eligibility screeners, case lookups, district statistics dashboards, and educational explainers for the most common questions filers face. All data and code are publicly available without paywalls.

Is the Open Bankruptcy Project affiliated with any law firm or court?

No. The Open Bankruptcy Project is an independent nonprofit. It is not affiliated with any law firm, bankruptcy court, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, the Executive Office for U.S. Trustees, or any commercial legal services provider. Editorial independence is a core principle. The project publishes data and analysis without preclearance from any external entity. Funding sources are disclosed on the transparency report page, and no funder has editorial control over content.

How is the Open Bankruptcy Project different from PACER?

PACER charges $0.10 per page (capped at $3 per document) to view federal court records and operates a separate paid search system. The Open Bankruptcy Project republishes bankruptcy docket information in free, searchable form, with structured data downloads and analyses that PACER does not provide. PACER is also limited to single-case lookups; OBP provides system-level aggregations across all 94 federal judicial districts. Where PACER is a billing system, OBP is a public-interest data project.

About - Open Bankruptcy Project

Tax-Exempt Status

Open Bankruptcy Project is a 501(c)(3) public charity. The Internal Revenue Service recognized OBP as tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code by determination letter dated April 6, 2026, effective March 27, 2026.

Employer Identification Number (EIN): 41-5159631
Public charity classification: 170(b)(1)(A)(vi) — publicly supported organization
Contribution deductibility: Donations are tax-deductible under IRC § 170. Bequests, devises, transfers, and gifts also qualify under §§ 2055, 2106, and 2522.
Fiscal year ending: December 31
Annual return: Form 990-N (e-Postcard) for the initial fiscal year; Form 990-EZ or Form 990 once gross receipts exceed applicable thresholds.

Filing fees are $338 for Chapter 7 and $313 for Chapter 13. Attorney fees typically range from $1,000 to $3,500 depending on the chapter and complexity. Fee waivers and installment payments are available for those who qualify.

Mission

The Open Bankruptcy Project builds free, open-source tools that screen federal bankruptcy cases for statutory compliance failures. We make public court data accessible and understandable to the people it affects most — debtors, advocates, researchers, and policymakers. A person navigating bankruptcy without a lawyer should be able to find and understand the same court records, statutes, and data that institutions rely on. That is the gap our tools exist to close.

Every tool we build is free. Every dataset we produce is open. We accept no attorney referral fees, run no advertising, and harvest no user data. Our work is funded entirely by tax-deductible public donations.

What Makes OBP Different

Real data, not opinions. Our findings are drawn from 8 million federal bankruptcy cases in the FJC Integrated Database, 11.5 million PPP loan records, and 3.7 million EIDL records — the largest publicly available combined dataset of its kind. We publish the data and the code that generates every finding.
Operating at scale. 49,000+ pages across 210+ publication domains, available in 6 languages (English, Spanish, German, Polish, French, Italian), all maintained by volunteer labor with no paid staff and no commercial sponsors. 501(c)(3) institutional infrastructure delivered without ongoing institutional overhead.
No ads. No referrals. No conflicts. We do not accept attorney advertising, referral fees, or sponsorships from legal service providers. This independence is structural: our articles of incorporation prohibit it.
Fully open-source. Every screening tool, analysis script, and dataset is published on GitHub. Anyone can audit, reproduce, or build upon our work without permission or payment.
On the Advisory Committee's docket. Our research was docketed by the Advisory Committee on Bankruptcy Rules as Suggestion 26-BK-3 (March 2026, automated Section 1328(f) discharge bar screening) and Suggestion 26-BK-5 (April 2026, Rule 9037 / Forms 121 & 309E1 SSN exposure remediation).
Accessible to everyone. Bilingual (English and Spanish), free forever. No paywall, no login, no tracking beyond anonymous analytics.

History

2025 Project founded. Initial analysis of Federal Judicial Center dataset (8 million cases, 2008-2024). First screening tools built for Section 1328(f) discharge bars.

Early 2026 Open Bankruptcy Project expanded to a network of statute-specific educational sites. Spanish-language resources launched. Free educational content published across the network.

March 2026 Suggestion 26-BK-3 (Section 1328(f) discharge bar screening) docketed by the Advisory Committee on Bankruptcy Rules and cited in its April 2026 agenda book. 501(c)(3) formation filed. 549+ cases and 3,100+ documents donated to the RECAP Archive.

April 2026 Suggestion 26-BK-5 (Rule 9037 / Forms 121 & 309E1 SSN exposure remediation) submitted to the Advisory Committee on Bankruptcy Rules. IRS determination letter dated April 6, 2026 recognized OBP as tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3). Network expanded across statute-specific educational sites. State × statute matrix launched (jurisdiction-specific statute explainers, bilingual English/Spanish). Active federal bankruptcy judge coverage expanded across all 94 districts. Interactive tools library published: exemption calculator, means test, Chapter 13 plan estimator, and credit rebuild timeline. National /cases/ index expanded to all 94 federal bankruptcy districts.

May 2026 Network crossed 49,000+ pages of free content across 210+ publication domains, now available in 6 languages (English, Spanish, German, Polish, French, Italian). AI Sanctions Tracker launched documenting court orders on attorney AI-hallucination conduct. Per-row LegalCase JSON-LD published across the 4,280-page national district index. Spanish corpus expanded with 17 new statute-specific topic translations. Full observability stack deployed (404 logging, ASN-tagged pageview sampling, watch-list alerts). Cross-program search filters (chapter, year, district) added across PPP, EIDL, and case data. RSS feed published for news + research output.

Methodology

Our screening tools analyze the Federal Judicial Center's Integrated Database, which contains filing-level records for all federal bankruptcy cases. We cross-reference prior filing histories against statutory discharge bars in Sections 1328(f), 727(a)(8), and 109(g) of the Bankruptcy Code.

The methodology identifies cases where a debtor's prior filing history would trigger a statutory bar that was not flagged at the point of case initiation. It forms the empirical basis for Suggestion 26-BK-3, docketed by the Advisory Committee on Bankruptcy Rules and cited in its April 2026 agenda book. The methodology has not undergone formal double-blind academic peer review; we publish full methodology and code openly and welcome critique.

Full methodological details are available on our Methodology page.

Institutional Engagement

OBP's work has produced verifiable institutional engagement to date:

Federal Rules Committee - Suggestions 26-BK-3 and 26-BK-5, based on OBP research, were submitted to and docketed by the Advisory Committee on Bankruptcy Rules; Suggestion 26-BK-3 was cited in the Committee's April 2026 agenda book.
Free Law Project - OBP contributes case data to the RECAP Archive, the largest free repository of federal court documents. 549+ cases and 3,100+ files donated to date. See the live national index at /cases/.
Internal Revenue Service - 501(c)(3) determination letter dated April 6, 2026 (EIN 41-5159631), classifying OBP as a 170(b)(1)(A)(vi) publicly supported public charity.
Discoverability - Network search visibility expanded materially through Q2 2026, with all 94 federal bankruptcy districts indexed and per-row structured-data (Schema.org LegalCase + Dataset) markup deployed across the national case index.

We are actively building relationships with law school clinics, legal aid organizations, and empirical legal researchers. Interested parties can reach us at [email protected].

Leadership

Founder & President

Kansas City, Missouri

OBP was founded by a small business owner who experienced systemic failures in the bankruptcy system firsthand and built the tools to measure them. The project grew from a single screening tool into a national research platform.

Governance

The Open Bankruptcy Project is organized as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Our articles of incorporation include an unamendable anti-acquisition clause: the organization cannot be sold, merged, or acquired under any circumstances.

We maintain strict independence from attorney advertising, legal referral services, and commercial legal technology companies. We do not accept funding that would create conflicts of interest with our mission of public transparency.

Contact

General: [email protected]
Press: [email protected]
Research: [email protected]
GitHub: github.com/openbankruptcyproject

About the Open Bankruptcy Project