How do you hire a bankruptcy attorney? A hiring guide for law firms

A bankruptcy attorney at your firm is the debtor's attorney or the creditor's — the lawyer of record on cases filed under federal bankruptcy law (11 U.S.C.) — and the first hiring decision is which side of that docket you are staffed for.

In a consumer practice, the attorney counsels debtors through Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 cases: the petition and schedules, the plan, the filings, and the hearings those cases carry.

On the business side, the caseload is far smaller — Chapter 11 restructurings are a fraction of the Chapter 7 volume, as the mix below shows.

Firms also sit on the creditor's side of the same chapters, where the client is a creditor rather than the debtor.

The same chapter numbers describe different jobs depending on which chair your client sits in.

The caseload mix behind that split is a verified national number.

U.S. bankruptcy filings rose 12.2% to 608,511 in the 12 months ending June 30, 2026 — 581,570 non-business filings against 26,941 business filings, the business side up 16.9%.

By chapter: Chapter 7 accounted for 382,161 cases and Chapter 13 for 215,490 — against 10,320 Chapter 11 restructurings and 336 Chapter 12 cases — consumer cases (7 and 13) dwarf Chapter 11 restructurings.

A consumer-volume practice and a business-side practice are different jobs with different experience profiles, so hire for the one your docket has, and say which one in the posting.

The candidate-side picture — the licensing path, the training, what the day looks like — is in our career guide on what a bankruptcy attorney does.

This page stays on the hiring decision.

Define the level by what the hire owns on day one.

A junior bankruptcy attorney drafts petitions, schedules and plans for a supervising attorney's review, runs the calendar and the document chase, and buys your senior lawyers leverage on volume.

A senior bankruptcy attorney owns contested matters first chair — motions, hearings, and the disputes a business case or a contested consumer case generates — and needs more from you than a salary: matters worth arguing, and a supervision structure that lets them run.

Where the seat sits in the firm-wide structure — associate, of counsel, contract — is in our guide to hiring an attorney, and the cross-role picture is in hiring for your law firm.

Whoever you hire, the documents under them need a defined supervision line — the statute below turns on exactly that.

The seat that runs the paper side under the attorneys' direct supervision is the bankruptcy paralegal; the hiring decisions for that role are in our guide to hiring bankruptcy paralegals.

Per BLS, lawyers typically need a law degree and a state license, which usually requires passing a bar examination — so the first verification is an active law license in good standing, checked at the source.

Per the ABA, lawyers are licensed by a state agency in each state, and that agency can confirm whether a person has a law license and is permitted to practice there; the ABA keeps a state-by-state directory of those agencies, which is where your check starts.

In New Hampshire and South Dakota, the directory says you phone the bar association to confirm a license and good standing.

If you have not run the check before, our guide to how to verify bar status before hiring walks it step by step.

What you are verifying beyond the license is the docket record itself — the checks below cover that.

The multijurisdictional questions run through the model conduct rules, because the licensing that matters is still the states'.

ABA Model Rule 5.5(a) bars a lawyer from practicing law in a jurisdiction in violation of its regulation of the profession — and bars assisting another to do so, the clause that reaches your firm.

Model Rule 5.5(b)(1) bars an unadmitted lawyer from establishing an office or other systematic and continuous presence for practicing law in the jurisdiction, except as the Rules or other law authorize, and Model Rule 5.5(b)(2) bars holding out or representing that they are admitted there — the reason titles and bios for an out-of-state hire deserve a second look.

These are the ABA's model texts; the rule that binds you is the version your state adopted.

Two model-rule provisions point toward workable out-of-state arrangements.

Model Rule 5.5(c) lets a lawyer admitted in another U.S. jurisdiction — and not suspended or disbarred — provide legal services on a temporary basis in four listed situations, one of which is association with a locally admitted lawyer who actively participates in the matter.

Model Rule 5.5(d) lets a lawyer admitted elsewhere practice from a local office when the services are for the lawyer's employer or its organizational affiliates, or are authorized by federal or other law.

Whether a bankruptcy practice fits that federal-law prong under your state's adopted rule is something our research did not confirm state by state — treat the provision as a question for your state bar's ethics counsel, not an answer.

If the arrangement is remote, ABA Formal Opinion 495 (2020) concluded that a lawyer may practice the law of their licensing jurisdiction while physically located in a state where they are not admitted, so long as that state has not deemed the arrangement unauthorized practice and the lawyer does not hold out as locally licensed, advertise a local office, or offer local legal services.

Local contact information on a website, letterhead or business card, the opinion says, would improperly establish a local office or presence.

Rules change and state versions differ.

Verify admission and good standing with the state's licensing agency before any offer, and confirm your state's version of Rule 5.5 — and the supervision arrangement below — with your state bar's ethics counsel before you finalize the hire.

Two channels in our research that are not tied to one practice area are verified to take attorney postings.

The ALA (Association of Legal Administrators) Job Board accepts ads for practicing attorneys, alongside legal managers, administrators and support staff such as legal secretaries, legal assistants, paralegals and law clerks.

And if the hire sits on the public-interest side, NLADA (National Legal Aid & Defender Association) runs a free job board open to all for browsing and posting, typically covering civil legal aid, defender, pro bono and public interest jobs.

The bankruptcy practice-area associations our research names — ABI and NACBA — are networking channels for this hire, not verified posting channels: we did not confirm that either runs a job board, so check their sites before you budget for a posting there.

The same applies to a state bar's bankruptcy section, if one exists where you hire — a route to the lawyers who already do this work; check whether it accepts postings before you budget for one.

For junior hires, law-school career offices and your state and local bar associations are routes to work yourself — our research did not verify either as a posting channel, so ask what each accepts before you budget for it.

If you use a legal search firm, the member code binds the recruiter and protects your desk: NALSC members subscribe to a Code of Ethics as a condition of membership; under that code, a member search firm may not solicit an attorney from an office where it made a placement for six months after that placement (unless agreed otherwise), and candidates may be submitted to employers only with the candidate's express prior consent and the employer's prior authorization — or a reasonable belief, from prior direct contact, that the employer would accept the submission.

Recruiting fee percentages remain unsourced in our research — fees are negotiated, so get the fee and any guarantee terms in writing and treat any quoted percentage as an opening position, not a market standard.

Before you post anywhere, look at the market from the candidate's side: browsing bankruptcy attorney jobs on this board shows how competing firms describe the role and the pay.

The channel-by-channel detail is in our guide to where a law firm should post job openings.

Benchmark before you budget.

The broadest figure in our research is the federal wage survey: in the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) May 2025 release, Lawyers (SOC 23-1011) had a national median annual wage of $159,670, and estimated employment of 754,500 wage-earning lawyers — it excludes the self-employed, so it measures the wage-earning market your posting competes in, not what firm owners take home.

The 25th-to-75th percentile band — $102,990 to $221,370 — is the same series nationally; treat it as a map, not a target.

Our research found no bankruptcy line inside that survey — the lawyers series we checked carries no practice-area split — so a bankruptcy attorney is priced inside the all-lawyers figures.

The sector cut nearest a firm hire is Lawyers in Legal Services (law firms, NAICS 5411): a median annual wage of $157,870 in May 2025.

Both figures are the same survey and release; the second is the industry cut, not a different estimate to average in.

The state-by-state table behind the series is on our attorney salary page.

What should move your offer inside that band is the profile, not the label.

A senior hire who has run contested matters first chair prices differently from a junior who drafts for review, and consumer-volume machinery is a different experience set from business-side cases.

Decide which capabilities the role must have on day one and price against the band for that profile.

One classification note before the offer: under federal law (29 CFR 541.304), a lawyer who holds a valid license and is actually engaged in the practice of law is an exempt professional, and the federal salary-level and salary-basis requirements do not apply to that lawyer.

State law can differ — California has no no-salary carve-out for lawyers: a licensed attorney practising law there is exempt only if they also earn a salary of at least two times the state minimum wage for full-time work, $70,304 a year at the 2026 minimum wage of $16.90.

Have employment counsel confirm the classification for each hire, in the state they will work in.

If you advertise the seat, the posting itself may need a number in it.

Employers with 15 or more employees must include the pay scale in any job posting in California, and must give it to any third party that posts for them; New York Labor Law 194-b requires businesses with four or more employees to list compensation ranges for advertised jobs; and New York City has required a good-faith pay range in job advertisements for NYC-performed work since November 1, 2022.

Our research also verified posting rules in Washington, Illinois, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Colorado, Connecticut (from October 1, 2026) and Virginia, and compliance trackers report rules in other jurisdictions that our research did not confirm from primary sources — so confirm the current rule, and whether your headcount is covered, with your state labor agency before you post.

The posting-side basics are in our guide to writing a law firm job posting.

Screen against a written scorecard, not a feel.

Before the interviews, write down what the docket needs: which side of the cases the hire owns, which matters they run alone versus draft for review, the hearings you expect them to cover, the filing volume, and the calendaring system they will join.

Score every candidate on the same sheet so the comparison survives the debrief.

Two checks belong before any offer.

Verify the license and standing at the source, with the state's licensing agency — the lookup the credentials section describes.

And run the conflicts check before the offer, not after: a lateral hire arrives with a former-client list that has to be run against your current matters.

The mechanics are in our guide to conflicts checks before hiring a lateral attorney, and the wider process around an experienced hire from another firm is in our guide to hiring lateral attorneys.

Keep the interviews on the work, and listen for a checkable record.

Ask the candidate to walk one case end to end — the chapter, the court, what they filed, what happened, and their own part in it — and to bring a filing they drafted with client details redacted.

If you set a writing exercise, draw it from the docket it must serve: per the EEOC, a required test must be necessary and related to the job, and must not exclude people of a protected group or people with disabilities.

Ask one question the resume cannot answer on its own: in each role, who was the attorney of record, and whom did the candidate work for?

Under 11 U.S.C.

110, the "bankruptcy petition preparer" line turns on exactly that — someone who is neither the debtor's attorney nor an employee of that attorney working under the attorney's direct supervision, and who prepares documents for filing for compensation, is a petition preparer.

Experience in that role is real bankruptcy-adjacent work, but it is not experience as the debtor's attorney — and the senior hire you are pricing at the top of the band needs the second.

Keep the questions lawful.

California bars all employers — any size — from seeking an applicant's salary history, including compensation and benefits, and from relying on it in deciding whether to hire or what to pay; Connecticut bars asking about a prospective employee's wage or salary history unless the applicant volunteers it; and Nevada requires the employer to give the wage or salary range to an applicant who has completed an interview, and also bans seeking salary history.

Anything touching protected traits is a question for your employment counsel before the loop, not during it.

A red flag is not a verdict — it is a question to resolve before the offer.

The ones worth slowing down for in this practice area:

• Bar claims the licensing agency does not confirm. An admission, a jurisdiction or a "good standing" line you cannot verify resolves with the state agency before the offer, not after.
• Petition-preparer work presented as attorney-of-record experience. Under 11 U.S.C. 110 the two roles are defined differently, and the statute obliges preparers to tell debtors in writing that they are not attorneys and may not practise law or give legal advice. Neither background is disqualifying; a resume that blurs them means the supervision history needs a straight answer.
• Local presence where the candidate is not admitted. A website, letterhead or business card carrying local contact information in a state where the person is not admitted is the fact pattern ABA Formal Opinion 495 warns establishes an improper local office.
• A case record that stays abstract. Ask for the chapter, the filing and the outcome. A narrative that shrinks under follow-up questions is telling you something.
• A conflicts history they will not put in writing. The conflicts run needs matter names early; a candidate who stalls is handing you a screen you cannot complete.
• No machinery at volume. Whatever your docket's rhythm is — filings, deadlines, hearing dates — a candidate who cannot describe how they tracked it in their last role has not run the caseload you are hiring for.
• Loose talk about former clients' debts. A candidate who narrates a former client's case in identifiable detail is showing you how your clients' files will be treated.

Set the structure in writing before day one: which matters the hire owns versus supports, who supervises the work, and what the billing or hour expectations are, stated as your firm's own.

Put the new attorney into the conflicts system before their first client conversation, and if the pre-hire run flagged a lateral issue, stand up the screen you planned rather than deferring it — the mechanics are in our guide to ethical screens for lateral hires.

Supervision is a defined duty, not a courtesy.

ABA Model Rule 5.1(a) requires partners and lawyers with comparable managerial authority to have measures giving reasonable assurance that all lawyers in the firm conform to the Rules of Professional Conduct — the lawyer-side duty is in our guide to Rule 5.1 and supervising lawyers.

On a consumer docket, define in writing what the hire's staff do under their direct supervision: 11 U.S.C.

110 places an attorney's employees under the attorney's direct supervision outside the petition-preparer definition, so that supervision is the line their staff work inside.

These are the ABA's model texts; the versions your state adopted control.

Configure the machinery before the first cases land: the calendaring and deadline system, the filing workflow, and a caseload ramp that starts below capacity and climbs.

A hire fluent in the law but lost in your systems burns the ramp months you were counting on.

Keeping the hire is cheaper than repeating the search.

Say plainly what the progression is — what a junior here becomes, and on what evidence — and put the first pay review on the calendar when you make the offer, benchmarked against the band in the pay section so the conversation has a number in it.

Supporting membership in the practice-area associations our research names — ABI and NACBA — is development you can fund; check each organization's current offerings yourself.

Employer information, not legal advice. The rules described here are ABA model rules, federal law (11 U.S.C. 110; 29 CFR 541.304) and state statutes; where a model rule is described, the version your state adopted is the one that applies. Verify licensure with the state's licensing agency, and confirm ethics, classification and job-posting questions with your state bar's ethics counsel, employment counsel or your state labor agency before you act.