Built by a practitioner. Every lesson comes from real petition preparation work, not textbooks.
VBA Academy was created by Joe McDaniel, a Minnesota-based bankruptcy petition specialist who has prepared 2,000+ professional real estate document closings across his career. When attorneys began asking where they could find trained assistants who actually knew how to prepare petitions correctly, there was no good answer. Most training programs taught general legal concepts. None taught the day-to-day petition preparation workflow that attorneys actually needed from their contractors.
So we built it ourselves.
VBA Academy is a training program of North Star Petition Services, operated by Consultant Services of MN out of Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Every module in the curriculum was developed from direct petition preparation work and a career built on precise, accurate document completion — the same standards that apply to every form, schedule, means test, and creditor matrix in a bankruptcy filing.
Graduates who complete both core courses and pass the CPDS-7 and CPDS-13 exams at 80% or higher earn the Certified Petition Drafting Specialist (CPDS) designation — a VBA Academy credential. CPDS graduates are listed in the North Star Petition Services attorney referral directory, which connects trained VBAs with bankruptcy attorneys actively seeking petition preparation contractors.
“CPDS” and “Certified Petition Drafting Specialist” are proprietary credentials of VBA Academy / North Star Petition Services and are not affiliated with any other organization.
Chapter 7 Petition Mastery covers all 12 modules required to prepare a complete Chapter 7 filing: the means test, all schedules, the Statement of Financial Affairs, the creditor matrix, quality control review, and working with bankruptcy software. Chapter 13 Petition Mastery covers the 10 modules specific to reorganization cases: plan drafting, disposable income calculation, secured creditor treatment, case monitoring, and plan confirmation. The bundled business course teaches students how to get attorney clients, set rates, and build a sustainable remote practice.
VBA Academy is a training program of North Star Petition Services, a DBA of Consultant Services of MN (Minnesota Secretary of State File #1092074800027, filed July 10, 2019, Active/In Good Standing). North Star Petition Services is registered as a bankruptcy petition preparer under 11 U.S.C. § 110 and operates with Errors & Omissions insurance coverage.
We are not a law school and we do not provide legal education or legal advice. We train document preparation specialists to work under attorney supervision.
Licensed MN Dept. of Commerce Closing Agent — Grand Rapids, MN
Joe built VBA Academy from a career defined by one standard: documents done right. As a licensed Minnesota Department of Commerce closing agent, he has completed over 2,000 professional real estate closings for lenders — every one requiring the same precision, accuracy, and attention to detail that bankruptcy petition preparation demands.
That perfectionist approach to document completion is the foundation of every course at VBA Academy. The curriculum doesn’t teach theory — it teaches the real workflow, the actual forms, the quality control habits, and the professional standards that attorneys expect from the specialists they hire.
Joe is also the founder of North Star Petition Services and co-founder of CareCertify, a 245D compliance training platform for Minnesota home care agencies.
