Guide
Every bankruptcy case starts with intake. The quality of the information your firm collects in the first few weeks shapes how quickly the petition, schedules, and statements can be prepared, and how many follow-up calls your staff will make along the way. This guide walks through what bankruptcy client intake covers, where manual workflows break down, and what to look for when you evaluate bankruptcy intake software.
What bankruptcy client intake covers
Bankruptcy client intake is the process of gathering everything the attorney needs to evaluate the case and prepare the filing. For consumer Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 matters, that usually means a detailed picture of the household and its finances, plus the documents that prove it.
- Household members, dependents, and prior addresses
- Income from employment, self-employment, benefits, and support
- Monthly living expenses
- Real property, vehicles, bank accounts, retirement accounts, and personal property
- Secured, priority, and unsecured debts, including lawsuits and collections
- Recent financial transactions, transfers, and prior bankruptcy filings
Why manual intake slows bankruptcy firms down
Many firms still send a long paper or PDF questionnaire and ask clients to email supporting documents. Clients skip questions that do not seem to apply, send photos of documents with missing pages, and lose track of what is still outstanding.
Staff then spend hours retyping answers into petition-preparation software, reading statements line by line, and calling clients to fill gaps. The result is a slower path to filing and more room for errors that the attorney has to catch during review.
The steps of a modern bankruptcy intake workflow
Bankruptcy intake software replaces the paper packet with one guided online workflow. A typical flow looks like this:
- The firm sends the client a secure invitation link
- The client completes an adaptive questionnaire on web or mobile
- The system requests the documents that match the client's answers and tracks what is missing
- OCR extracts data from pay stubs, bank statements, tax returns, and credit reports
- The attorney reviews answers and documents, messages the client, and exports the case for petition preparation
What to look for in bankruptcy intake software
General legal intake tools often stop at a contact form. Bankruptcy intake has more specific needs, so it is worth checking these points before you choose a platform:
- Questionnaires built around bankruptcy petition forms, not generic intake fields
- Questions that adapt to each client's answers, in English and Spanish
- A client experience that works on phones and tablets, not just desktops
- Document requests tied to the case, with clear tracking of missing files
- OCR data extraction for common financial documents
- Export into the petition-preparation software your firm already uses, such as Best Case (BCI) or Jubilee Pro
- Secure hosting, encrypted connections, and in-platform attorney-client messaging
How MatterVanta approaches bankruptcy intake
MatterVanta is bankruptcy intake and case management software built for U.S. bankruptcy law firms. It connects the guided client questionnaire, document collection, OCR extraction, secure chat, and attorney review in one workspace, then hands clean data to BCI, Jubilee Pro, or a petition-ready PDF.
Learn about MatterVanta bankruptcy client intake software