Should I fire my bankruptcy attorney and get another before the 341 meeting scheduled with creditors?

You have an absolute right to be happy with your lawyer. I charge a little more then younger, less experienced attorneys, but we do a very detailed sit down and review with our clients so there are no mistakes. My initial consultation takes at least an hour - I explain everything. At the review and sign, we do a three page checklist with the client so there are no misunderstandings (this takes one to two hours). We also go through a list of questions to be asked at the Creditors' Meeting by the Trustee. I meet my clients one hour before the Creditors' Meeting to go over everything one last time. This is time consuming and takes extra effort. But I have successfully filed thousand of bankruptcies. There are a lot of good attorneys out there - you just need to find the right one.

Since Chapter 13 means that you'll have a relationship with your attorney for the next five years, I'd recommend that you find a new attorney that is more responsive to your needs. It might not cost you anything, by failing to communicate with you (it's obviously BS that an email was sent that you didn't receive, there is no such thing as a lost email), didn't get your schedules filed on time and didn't fully and completely explain the schedules he wanted you to sign and didn't explain what will happen in a Chapter 13 - he's violated the requirements of a bankruptcy attorney. I recommend that you tell him that you're going to get a new attorney and demand that he refund everything that he paid you. When you ask for a refund, tell him that if you don't have your money back today, you'll file a complaint with the US Trustee's office. The US Trustee's office is responsible for policing bankruptcy attorneys and he knows (or at least every competent attorney knows) that he's screwed this up and the US Trustee will force him to repay your fees and possibly cause him additional problems.

It sounds like your lawyer client relationship is too sour for you to continue. I suggest you do find another lawyer promptly.

A Chapter 13 will live a lot longer than many marriages, and the fact that the attorney is not meeting your expectations this early in the game indicates that things will only get worse. Frankly, I suspect that you expect more than most bankruptcy attorneys are able to provide and still offer a reasonable fee, but that is beside the point.

I would recommend letting your current case be dismissed, or voluntarily dismissing it, because if another attorney stepped in at this point, it is very likely that your original attorney would collect his fee through the plan, requiring the new attorney to wait a long time to get paid. That is not a great incentive for someone else to take your case. If you start over, the first attorney would have to file a claim in your next case and would only get what your other unsecured creditors would get in your plan.

If you are unhappy with your lawyer and not communicating, it is time to get a new one. Make sure, however that the problem is not your unrealistic expectations. Changing lawyers in the middle of a case is time consuming and difficult. It is better to do so before the ? 341 hearing than after. Positions can get set and impressions made that are difficult if not impossible to correct later.

You are allowed to switch lawyers whenever you feel like it. Whether you SHOULD fire your attorney or not is never a clear-cut yes-or-no question. In figuring out whether you want to do that or not, don't focus on what they did or didn't do up to this point. Instead, ask yourself what else you think they should have done, or what you think you've paid them to do but that they haven't done. Then once you know VERY SPECIFICALLY what it is you think they were supposed to do but didn't, ask yourself whether the next lawyer is going to do those specific things or not.