Empirical analysis of consumer bankruptcy outcomes using 4.9 million federal cases from the Federal Judicial Center, covering all 94 bankruptcy districts.
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.
Our empirical research has been accepted by the federal judiciary for formal consideration.
Accepted March 23, 2026 by the Advisory Committee on Bankruptcy Rules. Proposes mandatory disclosure of attorney-level dismissal and completion rates in consumer bankruptcy cases, supported by analysis of 4.9 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 391,951 repeat filers who received a discharge with no documented eligibility verification.
All reports are published on our research platform and are freely available.
The ABI Commission proposed nearly 50 reforms in 2019. We measure what changed using 4.9 million federal cases. March 2026.
Complete index of published reports on 1328f.org, including district analyses, attorney scorecards, and outcome studies.
Detailed documentation of our data sources, statistical methods, and validation procedures.
Step-by-step instructions for reproducing our analysis using publicly available data. Includes SQL queries, Python scripts, and data dictionaries.
We collaborate with researchers at institutions including UC Berkeley and others studying consumer bankruptcy outcomes. Our dataset and methodology are available to any academic researcher working on bankruptcy-related empirical research.
If you are a researcher interested in our data or methodology, please contact us at contact@openbankruptcyproject.org.
All of our tools, scripts, and analysis code are published on GitHub under open-source licenses.