Someone (or some business) owes you money. So, what are your options?
- Attempt to contact the debtor and make a demand for payment. A good first step, but if you’re reading this you’ve probably already tried that.
- Hire a collection agent. While collection agencies do have marginal success with consumers, they charge high fees and tend not to get great results with experienced business debtors. Once you retain them to collect a debt, the agency is usually entitled to their fees, even if you resort to option #3.
- Hire an attorney, and by that we mean a real attorney. Is there such a thing as a fake attorney? Well, yes. Many “collection mill” law firms have one or more attorney’s name on the letterhead, but the attorneys rarely touch the case. Most if not all of the work is farmed out to paralegals or legal secretaries who do the actual work and simply have the attorney sign off on it. Can this system work for you as a creditor? In the simplest collection cases where the debtor does not bother to respond to the complaint and ends up in default, or when the debtor has absolutely no defenses to payment, it can. However, if the debtor answers the complaint and raises factual or affirmative defenses, a “collection mill” firm typically moves these more difficult cases to the bottom of the pile so they can focus on the more lucrative cases that are easy to collect.
If you or your business is owed money, you should immediately contact a hands on attorney to evaluate your case and the prospects of recovery. Our firm can handle collection cases on either an hourly basis, or a blend of a reduced hourly rate and a fair contingency fee. If we think you have a case, we’ll tell you, and if not, we’ll be straight and tell you that too. If you do retain us, your matter will be handled by an attorney with actual knowledge of the details of your case.
In collection cases against consumers, our firm only represents creditors. In business disputes, we do represent defendants with meritorious defenses to creditors’ claims.
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