Bankruptcy paralegal job description template: duties, requirements and pay range

A bankruptcy paralegal posting has six working parts: duties, qualifications, skills and software, pay and benefits, supervision, and how to apply.

Each gets its own block in the template below.

If you are still deciding whether the hire makes sense — the level you need, where to source candidates, how to screen — our guide to how to hire a bankruptcy paralegal covers the decisions before the posting, and the general mechanics of writing a law firm job posting are in that guide; this page stays on what this role's posting has to get right.

Core duties and responsibilities.

A bankruptcy docket runs on documents with deadlines attached, and BLS's published duty list for paralegals maps onto it directly: investigating case facts, gathering and organizing documents, drafting correspondence and documents, and filing documents with courts and agencies.

On this docket those become petition and schedule drafts for attorney review, the client document chase, the filing calendar and the court filings.

Write tasks a candidate can picture, and apply one test to every line — does the posting make clear that a lawyer reviews the work?

Supervision belongs in the duties block, not in fine print: under the ABA's Model Rule 5.3, partners and lawyers with comparable managerial authority must make reasonable efforts to ensure the firm has measures giving reasonable assurance that nonlawyers' conduct is compatible with the lawyer's professional obligations, and any lawyer with direct supervisory authority owes separate reasonable efforts for their own supervisees — efforts the rule's commentary says should account for the fact that nonlawyers lack legal training and are not subject to professional discipline.

Comment [2] to the rule lists paraprofessionals among the assistants lawyers must instruct on ethics, especially confidentiality, so write the confidentiality line as a duty, not a platitude.

The structure behind those duties is in our guide to supervising non-lawyer staff under Rule 5.3.

Duties that earn their place on a bankruptcy paralegal posting:

• Gathering and organizing the client documents each filing needs — income, asset and debt records, tax returns and the rest of whatever your file checklist requires, for attorney review
• Drafting petitions, schedules and related filings for attorney review and signature
• Drafting correspondence and case documents for attorney review
• Tracking filing deadlines and case milestones across parallel matters in the case management system
• Filing documents with the court, and pulling what comes back for correction
• Keeping case files and records current, including documents that arrive after the case opens
• Passing approved case-status updates to clients and logging contact in the case management system
• Running initial conflict checks and opening new matters
• Supporting billing with time entries

Two framing decisions shape this block.

First, say which caseload you are hiring for.

Of the 608,511 U.S. bankruptcy filings in the year ending June 30, 2026, 581,570 were non-business filings and 26,941 were business filings; by chapter, that year saw 382,161 Chapter 7 and 215,490 Chapter 13 filings against 10,320 under Chapter 11.

A posting written around consumer volume describes different work from one written around business cases, and saying which caseload the firm runs saves everyone a round of interviews.

Second, on the debtors' side, keep every duty inside the attorney's supervision — that is the line federal bankruptcy law draws.

11 U.S.C.

110 defines a "bankruptcy petition preparer" as a person, other than the debtor's attorney or an employee of that attorney under the attorney's direct supervision, who prepares a document for filing for compensation; a paralegal working under a debtor's attorney sits outside that definition, while the statute puts obligations on preparers — signing each document, giving the debtor an official written notice that the preparer is not an attorney and may not practise law or give legal advice, and listing an identifying number on the filing.

Structure the role as an employee working under the attorney's direct supervision and the posting describes supervised practice; the preparer regime is what governs work outside it.

Client intake needs the same care: ABA Formal Opinion 506 (June 7, 2023) says a lawyer may train and supervise a nonlawyer to do prospective-client intake — gathering initial facts, running an initial conflict check, obtaining the signature on the fee agreement — provided the prospective client is always offered the chance to talk to the lawyer, and whether that nonlawyer may answer a specific question depends on the question, because Model Rule 5.5 bars lawyers from assisting unauthorized practice.

If your firm's first contact with a bankruptcy client is an intake call, write what the paralegal gathers, assembles and records — never what they advise.

Where that line sits in detail: our guide to paralegal UPL risks.

Qualifications and certifications.

Two wording decisions do most of the work in this block.

First, certificate versus certification: NALA distinguishes a certificate — completing a learning program — from certification, which validates mastery against a professional standard; finishing a paralegal course does not make someone a certified paralegal, so write the one you mean.

Second, required versus preferred: unless your firm genuinely requires a credential, list it under a preferred line, or you will screen out strong candidates who learned bankruptcy casework on the job.

What can you legitimately require in the first place?

NFPA reports that no single authority oversees the paralegal profession in the U.S. and that, as of its writing, no state has paralegal licensure — so experience, program completion and voluntary credentials are the substance.

Keep the ABA out of the required line too: the ABA approves paralegal education programs — it does not certify or license paralegals; NALA, NFPA, NALS and AAPI certify individuals.

The credentials to know:

• NALA's Certified Paralegal (CP) — a two-part exam (the Knowledge Exam, then the Skills Exam) that renews on 50 hours of CLE per five-year period, including at least 5 in legal ethics. Read it as breadth, not depth: NALA's Knowledge Exam specifications, effective 2024, weight debtor/creditor and bankruptcy at 6 of the exam's 100 points, and NALA's Advanced Certified Paralegal course list as of October 2026 includes no bankruptcy course — among its subjects are Discovery, eDiscovery and Trial Practice — and the ACP itself is available only to current Certified Paralegals. The letters verify general paralegal mastery; bankruptcy docket experience is what your work samples and interview have to test.
• NFPA's CRP and RP — from its PCCE and PACE exams; NFPA says someone without substantive paralegal work experience is not eligible for either exam under its current criteria, and defines that experience as full-time employment doing paralegal duties at least 80% of the time, verified by employer letters — so these signal verified experience.
• NALS's ALP, CLP and PP — Accredited Legal Professional, Certified Legal Professional and Professional Paralegal; NALS membership is not required for any of its exams.
• State-level voluntary certifications — NFPA's regulation page lists 16, among them the California Certified Paralegal, Florida Registered Paralegal and Texas Board of Legal Specialization Certified Paralegal; the programs are state-specific and run by different kinds of issuers, so check what one actually requires with the issuing body before you build a requirement around it.

The eligibility routes behind a credential also read as experience checks.

NALA's CP paths include new paralegal-program graduates with no work experience, a bachelor's degree in any field plus one year of paralegal experience or at least 15 semester hours of substantive paralegal courses, and a route requiring a high school diploma or equivalent plus five years of paralegal experience with at least 20 hours of substantive CLE completed within the two years before applying.

A credential alone does not tell you the level; the route behind it starts to.

And verify any credential a candidate claims directly with the issuing body before you rely on it.

The candidate-side view of training routes, credentials and day-to-day work is in our bankruptcy paralegal career guide.

Skills and software.

Name the systems your firm actually runs — your case management platform, document management, the way filings go out to the court, time-and-billing — and split them into must-have-on-day-one versus willing-to-train.

A posting that names its real stack helps candidates judge the fit before they apply.

Keep the confidentiality habit in the skills list, not just the duties: Comment [2] to Rule 5.3 makes instructing nonlawyer assistants on ethics, especially confidentiality, the lawyers' job for the assistants they employ, whether employee or independent contractor — a posting that promises that instruction signals a supervised shop.

Skills tests.

If you screen with a writing exercise or a mock document-gathering task, keep it short and run it on a mock file.

The FLSA defines "employ" to include "to suffer or permit to work," so a candidate producing real, usable work for the firm may be an employee owed wages; a short exercise on a mock file is the safer design.

The EEOC adds a second constraint: a required test must be necessary and related to the job, and must not exclude people of a protected group or people with disabilities.

Pay range and benefits.

Anchor the range in your market, then adjust for the caseload you wrote above.

The national benchmark: in the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) May 2025 release, Paralegals and Legal Assistants (SOC 23-2011) had a median annual wage of $62,890 ($30.24 per hour), with the 10th percentile at $44,740, the 90th at $101,500, and the 25th-to-75th band running from $50,340 to $80,080, in employment of 392,880 (which excludes the self-employed).

The percentiles mark the spread of the occupation, not a floor and a cap for your hire.

In the same release, paralegals and legal assistants in the Legal Services industry had a median annual wage of $61,770.

Two caveats keep it honest: BLS combines paralegals and legal assistants in one occupation, and our sources carry no bankruptcy-specific wage series — the combined occupation is the broader category your hire sits in, not a bankruptcy-specific rate, so set the range by the duties you listed.

Our bankruptcy paralegal salary page shows these proxy figures and links to the state-by-state table.

Whatever range you post should be one you believe.

California defines "pay scale" as a good-faith estimate of the salary or hourly range the employer reasonably expects to pay on hire, with penalties running $100 to $10,000 per violation — treat your range that way everywhere.

In the jurisdictions our research verified, posting the range is already the law, not a nice-to-have.

The statutes we read:

• California: employers with 15 or more employees must include the pay scale in any posting — and hand it to any third party that posts on their behalf; the scale is also due to an applicant on reasonable request regardless of employer size.
• Washington: 15 or more employees — the wage scale or salary range (or fixed wage) plus a general description of benefits, in effect since January 1, 2023.
• Illinois: 15 or more employees — pay scale and benefits in any posting for a job performed at least partly in Illinois or reporting to an Illinois supervisor; a hyperlink is allowed.
• Minnesota: 30 or more employees in Minnesota — the starting salary range plus benefits, and the range may not be open-ended.
• Massachusetts: the pay range in postings for employers with 25 or more Massachusetts employees, since October 29, 2025.
• New York State: four or more employees — compensation ranges for advertised jobs. New York City: a good-faith pay range in all job advertisements for NYC-performed work since November 1, 2022.
• Colorado: compensation and benefits disclosed in all internal and public job postings under the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act.
• Connecticut: the wage or wage range plus benefits in every internal or public job advertisement, effective October 1, 2026.
• Virginia: the wage, salary or range in each public and internal posting.
• Nevada works the other way: the wage or salary range goes to an applicant who has completed an interview — not into the posting.

Where a benefits description is part of the rule — Washington, Illinois, Minnesota, Colorado, Connecticut — an empty benefits line is a compliance gap, so write what you actually offer.

Two pay decisions sit behind the range.

Overtime: DOL regulations say paralegals and legal assistants generally do not qualify as exempt learned professionals, because an advanced specialized academic degree is not a standard prerequisite for the field — the exception DOL gives is a paralegal who holds an advanced specialized degree in another professional field and uses it on the job, and job titles do not decide exemption, duties and salary do; the federal salary level anchoring the white-collar exemptions is $684 per week ($35,568 a year) as enforced by DOL as of October 2026.

The tests are in our guide to overtime classification for law firm staff.

Bonuses: Model Rule 5.4(a) bars sharing legal fees with a nonlawyer, while Rule 5.4(a)(3) lets a firm include nonlawyer employees in a compensation or retirement plan based in whole or in part on profit-sharing — whether staff may take a percentage of a specific case fee is a state-specific ethics question, covered in our guide to staff bonuses under Rule 5.4; confirm it with your state bar's ethics counsel before you promise one in a posting.

Before you post, confirm the rules that move.

Posting laws differ by state, city and employer size, and legislatures keep amending them; classification and bonus questions have their own variation.

Confirm current pay-disclosure rules with your state labor agency, and classification and bonus questions with employment counsel or your state bar's ethics counsel.

Adapting the template for a small firm.

If one hire has to span intake, the document chase, petition and schedule drafts, court filings and billing support, write exactly that breadth into the duties block instead of dressing it up — an honest list lets candidates judge the breadth before they apply.

The named-supervisor line matters more in a small firm, not less: with fewer lawyers, each person's supervisory role is specific, and Model Rule 5.3 puts the duty on the lawyer with direct supervisory authority, so name who reviews the work.

A solo or two-lawyer shop making its first staff hire should also say what training it will provide — the duties block is where an entry-level hire becomes a realistic posting rather than a wish list.

Adapting for your caseload mix.

Rewrite the duties bullets around what your cases actually produce.

A consumer-volume practice — the bulk of the filings: 581,570 non-business cases of the 608,511 total in the year ending June 30, 2026, most of them Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 — runs on client document gathering, petition and schedule assembly, and filing batches on a deadline calendar, so write the posting around throughput and a disciplined file checklist.

A docket that includes Chapter 11 business cases sits on the other side of that mix — write the duties around the work product your business cases generate and the deadlines those matters run on.

Creditor-side practices should say whose side the firm is on: the duties read differently when the client is the creditor, and the petition-preparer boundary above is a debtors'-side line your posting should not blur.

Let the requirements block follow the mix — ask for experience with the case types your practice handles, not "bankruptcy experience" in the abstract.

Adapting for level.

An entry-level posting leans on paralegal-program completion and the training you will provide, with duties written as document gathering and data entry under close review; a senior posting asks for years of supervised bankruptcy casework and day-one ownership of the filing calendar and the petition draft.

Say which one you are hiring — the honest version shows up in the requirements block and in the pay range you set, and it saves you from re-writing the posting after the first round of applications.

Five wordings sink otherwise good bankruptcy paralegal postings.

Each is fixable before you hit publish.

1. Duties that promise legal advice.

Phrases like "advise clients on whether to file," "develop case strategy" or "manage your own caseload" read as practicing law.

Keep every duty inside supervised work — Formal Opinion 506's intake line is the model: the nonlawyer gathers facts, runs the initial conflict check and collects the fee-agreement signature, and the prospective client is always offered the chance to talk to the lawyer; whether the nonlawyer may answer a specific question depends on the question, because Model Rule 5.5 bars lawyers from assisting unauthorized practice.

And keep the role inside the attorney-employee relationship: outside it, on the debtors' side, the person preparing filings for pay is a bankruptcy petition preparer under 11 U.S.C.

110 — a role that must sign each document, give the debtor the statute's written notice that the preparer is not an attorney and may not practise law or give legal advice, and list an identifying number on the filing.

A posting that blurs the two settings invites both.

The full boundary list is in our guide to paralegal UPL risks.

2. Preference wording that screens by who people are.

The EEOC says it is illegal to publish a job advertisement that shows a preference for, or discourages applications from, people because of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information — its own example is an ad seeking "recent college graduates," which may discourage people over 40 from applying.

Write about the work, not the person: cut "young," "digital native" and "recent grad."

Keep application questions to what is essential to decide whether a person is qualified — the EEOC treats questions about race, sex, national origin, age or religion as irrelevant to that decision — and treat the borderline ones as risky rather than harmless, because federal law does not clearly forbid every such question but the answers can be used as evidence of discriminatory intent unless justified by a business purpose.

Keep the process accessible, too: an employer must provide an accommodation a disabled applicant needs in order to apply, unless it causes significant difficulty or expense.

3. Salary-history questions.

Several of the state laws we read restrict them.

California (Labor Code 432.3, all employers) and Massachusetts (G.L. c.149 §105A) bar seeking an applicant's salary history; New York (Labor Law 194-a) and Illinois (820 ILCS 112) bar relying on it and requesting it as a condition of being interviewed or considered, or seeking it from a current or former employer; Connecticut bars asking about it unless the applicant volunteers it; and Virginia's posting law bans seeking it.

Each has its own conditions and exceptions, and other states and cities have rules we did not read, so check yours before the interview stage.

Ask for expectations instead — California's law expressly allows an employer to ask an applicant about their salary expectation for the position.

4. Conviction-history questions too early.

California's Fair Chance Act (employers with five or more employees) and New York City's Fair Chance Act (most employers) bar asking about or considering conviction history until after a conditional offer of employment; Illinois bars it until the applicant has been found qualified and selected for an interview or, with no interview, until after a conditional offer.

If your application form asks about criminal record, check your state and city law before you post.

5. Vague everything.

"Wear many hats," "fast-paced environment" and "other duties as assigned" with no task list leave strong candidates unable to tell whether the role is supervised bankruptcy casework or a catch-all — and in Minnesota the law adds its own reason to be specific: posted ranges may not be open-ended.

The fix is the duties block above: specific tasks, the software they run on, and the lawyer who reviews them.

After you post.

Set a review cadence before the posting goes live and hold to it — don't let applications sit unanswered while you compare notes.

If the pay range or the duties change, update the posting rather than explaining the difference in interviews.

Prepare the interview the same way for every candidate: the same questions, the same mock-file exercise, a scoring sheet — it keeps comparisons fair and keeps every question limited to what is essential to decide whether a person is qualified, which is the EEOC's standard for pre-employment questions.

And before yours goes up, browse the live bankruptcy paralegal jobs on this board to see the pay framing and duty lists you are competing against.

This page is employer information, not legal advice. Posting laws, classification rules and ethics rules change and vary by jurisdiction — confirm them with your state labor agency, employment counsel and your state bar's ethics counsel before you post.