How do I know if my bankruptcy attorney is a mill?

Warning signs include: you rarely speak with an actual attorney, your case is one of hundreds filed monthly, communications come only from paralegals, hearings are attended by attorneys you have never met, and billing entries are generic or duplicated.

What problems do bankruptcy mills cause?

Common issues include missed deadlines, incorrect schedules, failure to claim available exemptions, dismissed cases, unnecessary fees, and lack of personalized legal advice. Clients may lose assets they could have protected with competent counsel.

Can I fire my bankruptcy attorney if they are a mill?

Yes. You can substitute counsel or proceed pro se at any time. File a motion to substitute counsel with the court. You may also be entitled to a refund of fees for work not performed or performed negligently.

How many cases should a bankruptcy attorney handle?

There is no hard limit, but attorneys filing more than 20-30 cases per month may struggle to provide adequate individual attention. Quality representation requires reviewing each client's unique financial situation, assets, and exemptions.

What research datasets does OBP make available?

The Open Bankruptcy Project publishes case-level datasets covering all federal bankruptcy districts, with structured fields for chapter, filing date, disposition, district, judge, and party metadata where available. Aggregated datasets cover dismissal rates by district and time period, pro se filing rates, Chapter 13 completion rates, attorney filing volumes, and trustee-level statistics. Datasets are versioned and available in CSV and JSON. The research page links to the current data inventory with refresh dates and field-level documentation.

How do I propose a research collaboration with OBP?

Contact the research team via the research page or the contact form. Collaboration proposals are evaluated on alignment with the project's mission (free public access to bankruptcy data and analysis), feasibility of the project, and the willingness to publish results openly. The Open Bankruptcy Project does not partner with proprietary research projects that would withhold findings or restrict data redistribution. Successful collaborations have included academic studies, advocacy reports, and journalistic investigations - in each case with public output.

Are OBP datasets suitable for econometric or causal inference work?

Yes, with caveats. Case-level data spans a long time series and large cross-section suitable for difference-in-differences and similar designs around policy changes (e.g., the BAPCPA reforms of 2005, Subchapter V's enactment in 2019, the BTATCA threshold adjustments). The datasets are administrative records rather than survey data, so standard caveats about administrative-data measurement apply. The methodology page documents known data quality issues. Researchers conducting causal analyses are encouraged to publish preprints; the project links to them from the research page.

Research - Open Bankruptcy Project

Name: National Consumer Bankruptcy Outcomes Dataset (2008-2025)
Creator: Open Bankruptcy Project
Published: 2026-03-28
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Searches across 23.1M records: 7.9M bankruptcy case captions (PACER + RECAP), 11.5M PPP recipients, 3.7M EIDL recipients. Public-record data only.

A bankruptcy mill is a high-volume law firm that processes large numbers of bankruptcy cases with minimal attorney involvement. Cases are often handled by paralegals or software, leading to errors, missed deadlines, and poor outcomes for clients.

The Dataset

5,097,521+ Federal bankruptcy cases from the FJC Integrated Database - every consumer filing from 2008 through 2025

Our research uses the Federal Judicial Center's Integrated Database, the most comprehensive public record of federal bankruptcy filings in the United States. We cross-reference this data with PACER docket records, CourtListener archives, and RECAP to build a complete picture of consumer bankruptcy outcomes. The downstream case-level index is published at /cases/.

Federal Rules Submission

Our empirical research has been submitted to the Advisory Committee on Bankruptcy Rules for consideration.

Suggestion 26-BK-3

Docketed March 23, 2026 by the Advisory Committee on Bankruptcy Rules. Proposes automated screening of Section 1328(f) discharge eligibility at the point of case filing, supported by analysis of 8 million FJC records across all 94 federal districts.

This is the first data-backed proposal submitted to the Rules Committee that quantifies the scale of non-enforcement of Section 1328(f) discharge eligibility requirements. The submission identifies 392,412 repeat filers who received a discharge with no documented eligibility verification.

Reports

All reports are published on our research platform and are freely available.

USTP Reports & Studies: Source Library

An indexed map of the U.S. Trustee Program's public reports and studies (criminal referrals, debtor audits, GAO/RAND/FBI studies, manuals), with links to the authoritative DOJ sources and our data pages. June 2026.

What a Subchapter V Trustee Does

A plain-language, statute-sourced explainer of a Subchapter V trustee's duties under 11 U.S.C. 1183, drawn from the USTP's official Subchapter V Trustee Handbook. June 2026.

USTP Criminal Referrals, FY2006–2024

Public data: bankruptcy-related criminal referrals the U.S. Trustee Program made to U.S. Attorneys across 19 fiscal years, with formal charges filed (as of each report date) and prosecutions declined. June 2026.

USTP Debtor Audit Results, FY2007–2024

Public data: results of the U.S. Trustee Program's consumer-bankruptcy debtor audits across 16 fiscal years, random vs exception, and the rate of cases with a material misstatement. June 2026.

USTP Enforcement Activity, FY2017–2023

Public data: the U.S. Trustee Program's civil-enforcement actions, litigation outcomes, and potential financial impact, by statutory category and fiscal year, reproduced from official USTP tables. June 2026.

BAPCPA at Twenty: The ABI Commission's Unfinished Business

The ABI Commission proposed nearly 50 reforms in 2019. We measure what changed using 8 million federal cases. March 2026.

All Reports

Complete index of published reports on 1328f.org, including district analyses, attorney scorecards, and outcome studies.

Methodology

Detailed documentation of our data sources, statistical methods, and validation procedures.

Replicate Our Work

Step-by-step instructions for reproducing our analysis using publicly available data. Includes SQL queries, Python scripts, and data dictionaries.

Academic Engagement

OBP's empirical findings form the basis for Suggestions 26-BK-3 and 26-BK-5, docketed by the federal Advisory Committee on Bankruptcy Rules. Our dataset and methodology are available to any academic researcher working on bankruptcy-related empirical research, and we welcome critique and replication.

If you are a researcher interested in our data or methodology, please contact us at [email protected].

Open Source

All of our tools, scripts, and analysis code are published on GitHub under open-source licenses.

bankruptcy-discharge-screener The primary screening tool - client-side SQL.js against FJC data. No server required.
Rule 9037 Compliance Guide Open-source Rule 9037 PII compliance scanner. Detects unredacted SSNs, account numbers, and routing numbers in federal court PDF filings. OCR-enabled for scanned documents.
openbankruptcyproject.org This website - the organizational homepage for the Open Bankruptcy Project.
All Repositories View all public repositories on GitHub.