Best Case bankruptcy software: what it does and who it’s for

Best Case is petition preparation software for consumer bankruptcy practices — the program a firm uses to assemble a debtor’s Official Forms, run the means test math, build the creditor matrix, and transmit the case through CM/ECF. It has been in use for decades, its heritage is desktop software installed on firm machines or a firm server, it is owned by Stretto, and it is widely regarded as the market leader among US consumer debtor firms.

What Best Case does not do is gather the client’s information for you. It is an assembly and filing engine: once income figures, creditor addresses, account numbers, and asset values exist as structured data, it produces a clean, court-ready package. Everything upstream — the intake questionnaire, the pay stubs, the credit report, the notes from the consult — still has to be converted into fields by a person. That split is the most useful thing to understand when deciding whether Best Case fits your firm.

What Best Case actually is

Like other petition packages, Best Case is organized around a case file: you open a case for a debtor or joint debtors, enter data into screens that mirror the Official Forms, and the software renders the filing package from that single data set. A Chapter 7 package includes the voluntary petition (Official Form 101), Schedules A/B through J (Forms 106A/B–106J), the Statement of Financial Affairs (Form 107), Form 121, and the means test series (Form 122A-1 and, where required, 122A-2). Chapter 13 cases add the 122C series and your district’s plan. Current versions of every form are on uscourts.gov.

The value is in the connections between those forms. Enter a secured creditor once and it flows to Schedule D, the creditor matrix, and the statement of intention. Change monthly income and the means test, Schedule I, and the disposable income calculation move with it. That interlocking behavior is what separates petition software from filling in PDFs — and why firms rarely leave a platform casually.

Core capabilities

Petition and schedule preparation

Generate a complete, internally consistent petition package from one data set, with the schedule arithmetic handled for you. Totals tie out, exemption entries on Schedule C carry their statutory citations, and the software flags common omissions before you produce the package.

Means test calculation

You supply the six-month income history and household size; the software applies the applicable median income figure and expense standards to produce the 122-series forms. Those figures change on a published schedule and are maintained by the U.S. Trustee Program at justice.gov/ust. Confirm your installation is current before relying on a result near a threshold — it is only as good as the tables behind it and the income you keyed in.

Creditor matrix and noticing

Creditors entered on the schedules populate the creditor matrix in the format the court expects, so you are not maintaining a separate mailing list. Matrix formatting rules are fussy, district-specific in places, and unforgiving of stray punctuation — this is where the software earns its keep.

Electronic filing

Best Case has long supported electronic filing into CM/ECF courts, so the package moves from case file to docket without a separate assembly-and-upload step. Court-side requirements differ by district and change over time; check the vendor’s documentation and your district’s ECF procedures rather than assuming.

Desktop lineage and Stretto ownership

Best Case grew up as installed Windows software, and that lineage still shapes how it feels. Data lives where your firm puts it, performance does not depend on your internet connection, and the interface is dense and keyboard-driven in the way tools built for full-time operators tend to be. A paralegal who has prepared hundreds of cases in it is extremely fast; a new hire is not.

Stretto, a bankruptcy services company, owns the product today. For a filing firm the practical implication is forms maintenance and continuity — the incentive to keep a widely deployed product current with rule and form changes is strong. Vendors do change packaging, hosting, and licensing, so verify pricing and deployment on the vendor’s current pricing page.

Who Best Case fits

Where it is strong

• Forms currency. Official Forms and district requirements change; a long-established product with a large installed base has the resources to keep up.
• Trustee familiarity. Chapter 7 and 13 trustee offices have seen its output for decades. Nothing in your package will look unfamiliar.
• Depth on edge cases. Amendments, chapter conversions, joint-to-single splits, unusual exemption schemes — the fiddly situations are handled rather than worked around.
• Institutional knowledge. Experienced paralegals often arrive already fluent in it, which shortens onboarding more than firms expect.

The gap it leaves: getting the data in

Petition software solves the second half of the problem. The first half — moving a client’s financial life from paper, portals, and email into structured fields — is still manual at most firms. A paralegal reads a completed intake packet and retypes it: employers, forty or fifty creditors with account numbers, vehicle values, household expenses. That is hours of typing before any legal judgment is applied, and it is where most petition errors originate — a transposed account number, a creditor dropped between the worksheet and the matrix, income keyed from the wrong pay period.

That gap is not a defect in Best Case; it is outside the product’s scope. But it does mean “which petition software should we buy” is often the wrong first question. If your bottleneck is the transcription in front of the software rather than the work inside it, switching platforms will not help. The options — client portals, questionnaire exports, structured file imports, and OCR-based extraction from completed paper forms — are covered in our guide to getting client data into Best Case. (Casewell is one such tool: it reads completed handwritten intake forms and produces a verified .BCB file that imports into Best Case.)

When a cloud tool may fit better

An honest assessment includes the cases where the answer is something else. If your paralegals work from home part of the week, if a partner needs to review a draft between hearings, if you would rather pay per case than carry a license through slow months, or if you have no on-premises IT, a cloud-native platform will feel less like a fight. NextChapter (cloud-based, part of the Fastcase/vLex ecosystem), Jubilee (cloud-based, from LegalPRO), and CINcompass (CINgroup’s cloud offering) target that shape of firm; we compare them in Best Case alternatives, and choosing software for a small firm works through low-volume economics.

The counterweight is switching cost: migrating open cases, retraining staff whose speed lives in their fingers, rebuilding checklists. Firms that move for a concrete reason — remote staff, a pricing model that fits their volume — are usually satisfied. Firms that move out of frustration with data entry find the frustration waiting on the other side.

This guide is general information for law-firm staff, not legal advice for any particular case.