Collection and Judgement enforcement
"Rather go to bed without dinner than to rise in debt." ~ Benjamin Franklin
Achieving the maximum returns on outstanding debts while minimizing potential risks requires persuasive skill, tenacity and a clear understanding of debt-related regulatory requirements. Our debt collection lawyers have deep experience collecting pre- and post-charge-off accounts, and our experienced in-house collection staff draws on the most advanced software technology in the industry.
LS’s attorneys represents clients in a wide spectrum of collection cases, including commercial, retail, landlord-tenant and general collection accounts. We handle all forms of landlord rights and provide in-house skip tracing services. Our collection attorneys are licensed in NY, NJ , and are actively involved with numerous industry organizations, including the following:
National Association of Retail Collection Attorneys (NARCA)
National Association of Subrogation Professionals (NASP)
Missouri Creditors Bar Association
National Law List
Debt Buyers Association (DBA)
The Association of Credit and Collection Professionals (ACA)Collections Defense
Our experience also includes, but is not limited to, defense of allegations involving:
Fair Debt Collections Practices Act (FDCPA)
Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA)
Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA)
Malicious Abuse of Process/Malicious Prosecution
Usury
Our firm defends debt buyers, collection agencies, and law firms throughout the US, as well as in federal court. In addition, our firm has handled collection defense issues in the NY Court of Appeals-Eastern District, NY Court of Appeals-Southern District, and more.
Pre-Litigation Law Firm Collection Action
In head-to-head competitions with large collection agencies, we outperform them by a significant margin in pre-litigation collection action. Being a law firm, we create a higher sense of urgency in debtors because they believe and we in fact do pursue suit-worthy accounts in court if they don’t pay voluntarily. Our “all bite, no bark” approach starts in this collection-action phase. We are respectful and helpful and are able to resolve more accounts with more good will than a collection agency.
We begin the collections process by sending the delinquent debtor a law-firm demand letter, and then following up with a phone call if he or she or the organization does not call us first.
Our initial objective is to give the debtor an opportunity to take care of the debt voluntarily. If the debtor speaks with us, we make suitable payment arrangements, offering a discounted settlement or payment arrangements if cooperative financial disclosure shows an inability to pay the full debt.
If the debtor fails to communicate with us or refuses to pay voluntarily, we identify an enforcement avenue, obtain client instructions to do so, then sue, obtain and enforce judgment.
Litigation
When the debtor has the ability to pay the debt and simply refuses to do so resulting in the need for court enforcement, we can often recover the full principal and interest owing and much of the costs of collection for our client. We can also ensure that the bad debt is reported on the debtor’s credit record if our client would like to do so.
If pre-litigation law firm collection action is unsuccessful, we identify an enforcement avenue, obtain client instructions to do so, then sue, obtain and enforce judgment. Judgment is enforced through garnished wages or bank accounts, filing a writ of seizure and sale against the home and other real estate, or forcing the sale of real estate, if requested by our client, using the judicially-supervised sale process we pioneered in Ontario. We have particular expertise in judgment enforcement with an arsenal of other tools that ensure that if judgment debtor has the means to pay, we can almost always find a way to enforce the judgment. At any point during the process, we are open to settling the debt for what our client feels is reasonable given the circumstances.
Judgment Enforcement
Our firm has particular expertise in judgment enforcement with an arsenal of other tools that ensure that if judgment debtor has the means to pay, we can almost always find a way to enforce the judgment. We regularly enforce judgments obtained for our clients by other law firms and paralegals.
As with all our services, we enforce judgments on a no-recovery, no-fee basis to give access to justice to judgment creditors who run out of money or desire to pay traditional hourly or block fees. Unfortunately, many creditors are surprised when they win a judgment only to find out that this does not bring them in any money. They are surprised that the time and fees they invested in “winning the case” just leads to more time and fees to enforce the judgment, fees that may be “throwing good money after bad”.
On a no-recovery, no-fee basis we identify an enforcement avenue then enforce your judgment through garnishing wages, bank accounts or other liquid assets or forcing the sale of real estate process .
