Before anything else, check the three thresholds. We take commercial claims only, over $25,000, against debtors in California or New York. If your matter misses any of those, call anyway — we will point you somewhere useful, but we will not be able to take the file.
Step one — send the case information
We need enough paper to prove the obligation and enough intelligence to find the debtor. In practice that means:
The documents that create the debt
- The contract, credit application, or purchase order that governs the relationship
- For a loan: a copy of the promissory note together with the full payment history
- For goods or services: the invoices, plus delivery receipts, bills of lading, or signed work orders
- Any personal guaranty signed by an owner or officer
- A running statement of account showing charges, payments, and the current balance
The correspondence
- Emails or letters in which the debtor acknowledges the balance, promises payment, or asks for time
- Any dispute the debtor has raised — we would much rather hear about it from you first
- Prior demand letters, and any response to them
What you know about the debtor
- Exact legal entity name, DBAs, and any aliases or successor entities
- Street address, phone numbers, and the names of principals
- Banking information if you have it — even a routing number off a returned check helps
- Anything you have heard about assets, other creditors, pending sales, or a move out of state
And about you
- Your full legal entity name exactly as it should appear on the complaint
- Your entity type and state of formation
- A short written summary of how the debt arose, in your own words
A short written summary is the single most useful thing you can send. Two paragraphs describing what happened, in plain language, saves an hour of reconstructing the story from invoices.
Step two — post the cost deposit
Litigation has hard costs that are owed to third parties, not to us: court filing fees, service of process, sheriff and levying-officer fees, court reporters, record and asset searches, and in some matters a receiver or investigator. Those are yours to fund.
Our legal work is separate, and it is on contingency. You will not receive an hourly bill from this firm.
For a typical single-defendant case, the initial deposit covers the matter through judgment. If a file later needs a significant expenditure — a keeper at a business, a debtor examination in a distant county, a title search across several properties — we come back and ask before spending it. We do not surprise clients with costs.
What happens after you send it
- Attorney review. A lawyer reads the file, not an intake clerk. We are deciding whether we would put our own fee at risk on it.
- A phone interview. Usually 20 to 30 minutes. We are looking for facts that are not in the documents — who you dealt with, what was said, what the debtor's business actually looks like. You do not need to come to the office.
- A debtor profile. We search assets, liens, judgments, related entities, and litigation history before we decide how to proceed.
- A collection plan. Every accepted file gets one. Sometimes it is "file immediately and move for writ of attachment." Sometimes it is "this debtor is about to sell a building, so we file and lien first."
- Suit. On accepted files we typically file within the first several days. Investigation begins immediately on receipt.
If we decline
We will tell you why, promptly, and we will not sit on the file while your limitations period runs. The most common reasons are a debtor with no findable assets, a claim under the $25,000 threshold, a consumer rather than commercial debt, or a debt so old that the statute of limitations has run or is about to.
Declining is not a judgment about the merits of your claim. It usually means we do not think there is money at the end of it, and taking a fee out of a recovery that never happens is not a business either of us wants to be in.
Send Us a File
Retainer Agreements