CreditRage -12- The Pros and Cons of Hiring a FDCPA Lawyer

The consumer lawyers I’ve consulted who purport to fight abusive debt collectors each have two switches installed on their desks. One is labeled “Settle For Half Price”, and the other says “File Bankruptcy”. For any other solution, they might have to leave their desks and earn their billable time to make it happen. I’ve found that since I won’t “order from the menu”, they’re not interested in my problems and won’t return messages, even when professional help is dearly needed.

They moan and cry that we need to respect their costly sheepskins and trust their expertise in arcane Latin phrases, then only accept the most dead easy cases. Might as well work those ourselves if they’re so simple, hmm? It’s like they want to retire and keep a job at the same time.

About twenty minutes into one consultation, I’d begun to reveal all the homework I’d done for fighting a creditor suit. The fellow’s eyes glazed over as I quoted FTC opinion letters. It was apparent I knew vastly more about the FDCPA. Another one, the area’s most active debtor rep, has given inaccurate statements to journalists about what the laws say. He told me I had no case despite repeated overshadowing issues in the dunning letters. It’s taken me two years to realize that he simply preferred not to fight a debt lawyer who he’d be begging for a “half price sale” in some other case the next month.

Right there is the worst part, how they maintain nearly incestuous relationships with the opposing debt industry lawyers. One time in a courtroom gallery my flesh crawled as a “defender” made whiny noises of concession to a plaintiff, like he forgot what the word “defense” means. His client was meantime a worse hard luck case than you could imagine, the very embodiment of someone needing protection from creditor parasites.