After the initial consultation and you’ve decided to become a LeverLaw client you need to sign a retainer agreement and make some payment on a flexible payment plan. We then need to make an appointment. We begin production of your case based upon what was gathered in the initial consultation and what will be supplemented by our requests between retention of our firm and the first working appointment. When you then meet with us for your first working appointment we have a decent, but rough draft of your documents.

We then work together to increase the accuracy and completeness of those documents at the appointment. We also track how we’re progressing towards executing the strategy that we decided upon when we initially discussed your case. In some instances, that strategy may evolve as we go into production of your case and focus on the myriad details involved in your case.

Appointments can be in our offices at 200 Pine Avenue, Suite 620, Long Beach, CA 90802, or they can be wherever you have privacy and high speed internet access. Using conferencing with or without video, we can review your documents and make just as much progress in your case as if we were physically present in the same room if you have a quiet environment on your end where you can concentrate with us during the appointment.

How many appointments it will take to prepare your case for filing, and when the appointments are scheduled depends on several factors. Those factors include:

1. The complexity of your case. More complexity means more details to be examined and possibly even complications that have to be resolved.
2. Strategic concerns. Sometimes it is better to wait to file. Determining the petition date is one of the main strategic considerations that a debtor can control.
3. Your financing of the case. We offer flexible payment plans, but since we are discharged too we need to have the case fully financed in the case of Chapter 7 cases before we file. Most Chapter 13 cases are at least partially financed postpetition in the plan.
4. Contingencies. Sometimes filing is contingent on an event that depends on the actions of a third party.

We always need to have an appointment on file between the time you retain LeverLaw and the time we file the case. It’s almost always at least two appointments for the simplest cases, but I’ve seen very complex cases run in excess of 10 meetings.

The first meeting is the basic build. We then always set the next meeting. Once we’ve done all the appointments necessary to build the case, then we set a final appointment called the “Signing” appointment. That’s when we finish up the details pending from the last meeting, and have you sign the documents, do your credit counseling and plan the postpetition phase of the case. We set a “Target Filing Date” or “TFD” to flow into that phase, and so long as all the details are done we actually file the case from our computers to the Court’s computers via the federal government’s intranet.

At that point the case has been carefully built, and you’ve been briefed on everything important about the case. Now the case is in the postpetition phase described in the next section.