Bankruptcy Attorney Fees in Pennsylvania: What Filing Actually Costs

Short answer. In Pennsylvania, a straightforward consumer Chapter 7 runs a flat attorney fee of about $1,200–$1,800, plus the $338 court filing fee and $25–$50 for the two required credit-counseling courses. A Chapter 13 typically runs $3,500–$4,500 in attorney fees plus the $313 filing fee — and most of the Chapter 13 attorney fee is paid through the plan over three to five years rather than up front.

Those are the numbers most people are looking for, so I put them first. What follows is the part that actually decides your cost: what drives a quote up, what a flat fee should include, and how people who cannot pay a lump sum still get filed.

• Attorney flat fee: $1,200–$1,800. Quoted in writing after the free consultation. A routine wage-earner case with one home, one car, and consumer debt sits at the low end.
• Court filing fee: $338. Set by the Judicial Conference and identical in the Middle, Eastern, and Western Districts of Pennsylvania.
• Credit counseling and debtor education: $25–$50 total. Two courses from an approved provider — one before filing, one before discharge.
• Credit report pull: usually included in the attorney fee.

In Chapter 7 the attorney fee is generally paid before the case is filed. That is not a firm preference — fees still owed to your lawyer at filing get discharged along with everything else, so the practical rule across the bankruptcy bar is that Chapter 7 fees are paid in advance. It is exactly why the payment-plan structure below matters.

Chapter 13 is more work — a plan, a five-year relationship with the trustee, plan modifications, mortgage cure calculations — so the attorney fee is higher, typically $3,500–$4,500. But the payment structure is the opposite of Chapter 7.

Each Pennsylvania bankruptcy court sets a presumptive "no-look" fee: an amount a debtor's attorney may charge in a standard Chapter 13 case without filing a detailed fee application. Most of that fee is paid through the plan — the trustee disburses it out of your monthly plan payment alongside the mortgage arrears and other creditors. A comparatively small retainer plus the $313 filing fee is what it takes to get the case on the docket.

That is why a homeowner facing a sheriff sale next week can often file even with almost nothing in savings. The stay attaches the moment the case is docketed; the fee is paid over the following years.

A quote is not a lottery draw. These are the facts that raise it:

• A business, side income, or 1099 work. More schedules, more scrutiny, sometimes a means-test analysis that is not a one-page exercise.
• Recent asset transfers. Property signed over to a relative in the last two to four years invites a trustee avoidance action.
• Above-median income in Chapter 7. The full means test with expense deductions is real work.
• Prior filings, or a case dismissed and refiled. Stay-extension motions are extra litigation.
• Non-exempt assets to protect, or a lien-avoidance or lien-strip motion.
• Adversary proceedings — a creditor challenging discharge, or a student-loan undue-hardship action — are always quoted separately.

What does *not* raise the fee: how much you owe, how many creditors you have, or how bad you feel about the situation. A $250,000 credit-card discharge is not more work than a $30,000 one.

Most people who call are not sitting on a spare $1,500 — that is generally the whole problem. Three real routes:

• Installments before filing. Split the flat fee over several months. Once it is paid, we file. It works well when nothing is scheduled against you yet.
• A filing-fee waiver or installments. Under 28 U.S.C. § 1930(f), the court may waive the $338 Chapter 7 filing fee for a household under 150% of the federal poverty line that cannot pay in installments. Otherwise the court routinely allows the fee in up to four installments.
• Chapter 13 when the clock is short. If a sheriff sale, repossession, or garnishment is imminent and the money is not there, Chapter 13 lets us file now and pay the bulk of the fee through the plan.

Stop paying unsecured creditors you are about to discharge, and redirect that money toward filing. Paying a credit-card minimum for six months while a foreclosure runs is the most expensive thing a person in this position can do.

Petition-preparer services and $400 online packages exist. They cannot give legal advice, cannot represent you at the 341 meeting, and cannot fix an exemption chosen wrong. The failure I see is not a rejected petition — it is a case where the wrong exemption set was elected or an asset was undisclosed, and the trustee sells something the filer expected to keep. That mistake costs many multiples of any attorney fee.

If money is genuinely the barrier, the honest answers are legal aid, a fee waiver, or a payment plan — not an unrepresented filing with assets at stake. If you want to understand the pro se route properly first, read the [self-filing guide](/file-bankruptcy-without-a-lawyer-pa); it lays out the risks without a sales pitch.

Every consultation here is free, and you leave it with the chapter that fits and the exact flat fee in writing. Call (717) 724-7503.