subject: Attorneys And Judgments [print this page] My articles are my opinions, and is not legal advice. I'm a judgment referral expert, and not an attorney. If you ever want a strategy to use or legal advice, you should contact a lawyer. Attorneys are vital professionals which are sometimes, however not always, good choices to collect specific judgments. Judgment recovery may often be difficult and time-consuming. When an attorney is qualified and right for your judgment, they may really help. Lawyers are particularly helpful for difficult recovery cases, to handle all or part of a judgment collection project.
Most attorneys are experts at winning judgments, and most don't collect judgments. For the majority of attorneys, winning court cases is often a lot more interesting than recovering judgments. When the right judgment case meets the right judgment collection lawyer, magic (collecting money from your judgment debtor) could come to pass.
If a judgment debtor has money, yet stubbornly refuses to repay you, hiring a collection attorney can sometimes intimidate your judgment debtor, to find the money to settle or pay the judgment. Usually, hiring a good recovery attorney to collect your judgment, will save you a lot of hassle and stress.
While hiring a recovery attorney may be very expensive, with a hefty hourly fees and retainer, sometimes an attorney is the right choice to collect your judgment. Ideally, you may find a lawyer which can work for, at least partially, for a contingency. Unfortunately, most judgments aren't the right kind to interest pure contingency collection attorneys. Collection attorneys will often work for a contingency, if your judgment is large and the debtor has a lot of assets.
Generally, the larger a judgment and the judgment debtor's assets are, the more likely you are to retain a lawyer. Besides insuring that the debtor has sufficient assets to at least partially pay the judgment, the key to the best chance of a successful collection, is to hire the best attorney for your judgment situation.
How do you find the best recovery attorney for your judgment? Usually, when you want to find a lawyer, it is a good idea to begin with your local State Bar for your county or state, or get a referral from another trusted lawyer, a friend, or a judgment broker. The ideal collection lawyer is one who has successfully recovered judgments in the past, where the post-judgment collection cases were like that of your judgment and judgment debtor.
You don't always need an attorney to recover a judgment. You could recover a judgment yourself, sell it for pennies on the dollar, or assign it to a judgment recovery specialist; yet sometimes hiring an attorney (who is by definition an expert) makes the most sense.
