“Discovery would be much more invasive for the diocese if they were facing hundreds of jury trials,” he said.

Some dioceses have filed bankruptcies just as a trial was about to begin or the day before a bishop was to be deposed, said attorney J. Michael Reck of Jeff Anderson & Associates. “It’s a very calculated tactic used by the diocese because the one thing that a bankruptcy does is it will, at least initially, freeze that discovery process,” said Reck. Ultimately, even in bankruptcy, dioceses will face some level of discovery — the pre-trial process by which lawyers on both sides of a case obtain evidence from each other through interviews and document requests.

And Reck said a bankruptcy court might even allow a handful of cases to go to trial "to establish what a valuation would be for a certain type of case."

Bankruptcy filings also can be a way to get reluctant insurance carriers to pay up.