Bankruptcy Volunteering

Bankruptcy Phone Advice
  • Time Commitment: 2-hour shift
  • Level of Service: Advice only
  • Experience required? Yes. General familiarity and understanding of bankruptcy law required.
  • Description: During the phone advice session, the volunteer attorney will answer the client’s questions about bankruptcy procedures and help clients decide if bankruptcy will meet their needs. While most clients are debtors, we occasionally will have a client who is a low-income creditor seeking information on topics such as filing a claim in a debtor’s bankruptcy case.
Chapter 7 Bankruptcy Screening
  • Time Commitment: 2-hour shift
  • Level of Service: Advice only
  • Experience required? Yes. General familiarity and understanding of bankruptcy law required.
  • Description: Although this role is mostly involved in screening, periodically clients will have some bankruptcy questions. Attorneys volunteering in this role should be prepared to screen and advise generally.
Chapter 7 Bankruptcy Client Representation
  • Time Commitment: 10+ hours
  • Level of Service: Extended/full representation
  • Experience required? No.
  • Description: This is a good entry level role, for VLN is willing to help the attorney through the process of getting admitted to federal court, and to train the attorney in bankruptcy law and practice. VLN has free bankruptcy software and mentors to help attorneys get a good start.
Bankruptcy Adversary Procedure
  • Time Commitment: 5-10+ hours
  • Level of Service: Extended/full representation
  • Experience Required? Yes.
  • Description: This is a good role for attorneys with both a knowledge of bankruptcy law and bankruptcy litigation. These cases can require longer amounts of time, so the attorney needs to be comfortable with taking on a given case based on their own assessment of the time that such a case would require (after talking with the client to make this assessment). If an attorney only has a few hours to offer, then one good option is to offer to represent the client only at a potential mediation, but not to offer full representation services.

Trainings and Resources

Module 1: Bankruptcy Overview

Module 2: Pre-filing Considerations

Module 3: Preparing Schedules

Module 4: Getting to Discharge

VLN Core Training: Working Successfully with Your Bankruptcy Client
  • Date: January 15, 2025
  • Presented by: Ronald Lundquist, David Peterson, and Chris Kramer
  • Length: 1 hour for 1 standard CLE credit (on-demand)
  • Description: The attorneys on this panel have a track record of working successfully with their VLN bankruptcy clients. Together, they explore best practices and ideas that they have found successful in working with VLN clients. The training focuses on getting the case filed, in addition to getting the case across the finish line and receiving a Discharge Order from the Bankruptcy court.
  • View recording on Legal Services State Support’s website
ProJustice On-Demand Webinars

Visit ProJusticeMN.org and log in to your account. After logging in, click on “Library”, “Consumer Law”, and then “Bankruptcy”. From there, you can select which webinar you would like to watch.