Finishing your certification is the first milestone in a bankruptcy petition preparer career, not the last one. The next question most new petition preparers and virtual bankruptcy assistants (VBAs) run into is more practical: how do you find your first attorney clients, and who do you turn to when you hit a case you haven't seen before?
That's the gap the National Association of Virtual Bankruptcy Assistants (NAVBA) is built to fill.
What NAVBA Is
NAVBA is a professional association specifically for bankruptcy petition preparers and virtual bankruptcy assistants — not a general virtual-assistant or freelancer group. Membership is built around the actual shape of this work: attorney relationships, Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 casework, and the ongoing questions that come up once you're drafting petitions for real clients instead of practice files.
Why It Matters Once You're Certified
A 713 Training certification proves you can draft an accurate, court-ready petition. What it doesn't do on its own is build your client pipeline or give you a place to check your work against peers who do the same job. NAVBA membership is aimed at that second half of the career:
- Attorney referral resources — connections and visibility with bankruptcy attorneys looking for reliable petition preparers, instead of starting your outreach from zero.
- A peer network of working preparers — people doing the same casework, who've already run into the same means-test edge cases and Chapter 13 plan quirks you will.
- Ongoing professional credibility — active membership in a dedicated association signals to attorney clients that you treat this as a specialty practice, not a side gig.
Who Should Consider It
NAVBA is most useful for preparers who are past the training stage and actively building or growing a client base — whether that's a new Bankruptcy Petition Specialist™ landing a first attorney client, or an experienced VBA looking to expand beyond word-of-mouth referrals.
Getting Started
If you're still working through certification, that's the right place to start — NAVBA membership pays off once you have the credential to back it up. Explore the Chapter 7 & 13 Bankruptcy Petition Mastery course to get there, or learn more about membership directly at navba.org.