Recently I have been hearing about organizations that are telling people who are trying to find debt consolidation programs, that you must now use a law firm to handle your case. They claim that it is currently illegal for firms which are not law firms to do debt settlement.
This is not fully correct. The problem is with organizations, such as these law firms, that ask for advance fees for their services. Nearly all attorneys will charge their customers nearly a thousand dollars for a retainer. In addition to that they normally also charge around eighty dollars a month for their legal services.
Let’s look at this. You’re retaining the services of a lawyer. That appears great! Now what exactly are you retaining them to do? Well if you study their contracts you’re retaining them for the purposes of settling your debt. The last time I looked there was no legal papers required for that, no court appearances. In reality there’s no requirement for a law firm or even a paralegal what so ever to merely negotiate your credit card debt.
Second as I said, you’re also paying a monthly legal fee. What’s that for? Well they’ll tell you they’re getting in touch with your creditors informing them that they are representing you. Well what they’re doing is simply sending them a power of attorney letter. This mind you most collection organizations file in the big round file cabinet. Mailing this notice won’t stop collection calls. Additionally, they do not tell you this, but they don’t send this letter to everyone of your creditors. The reason behind this is that quite a few creditors will immediately turn your file to their legal department for a prospective law suit when they receive any such letter.
The only real method to get the phone calls to fully stop will be to send them a cease and desist notice informing them that you don’t plan to pay them back the debt and that they’re to cease all communications. You can envision what this kind of correspondence will result in. If you stop all feasible ways the creditor has to collect the cash from you, it will more than likely cause them to make use of the court system to recover some of their debts. Also, most of these settlement law firms are not even doing the work for you. There are several pending law suits against these law firms declaring that every element of the settlement work is being completed by non lawyer for profit companies. That means you are spending money on services of a law firm but a lawyer is not actually supplying you any of those services.
Now let’s examine how they charge their settlement charges. Nearly all attorneys will charge a flat fee of fifteen to twenty percent of the total debt amount. This cost is spread out throughout the first year or two monthly payments you make. That means you’re paying the law firm for services that they have not even performed. Additionally if you are paying them a flat fee, where’s their motivator to negotiate for the lowest total amount?
Now according to the Federal Trade Commission’s ruling established October 27th a lawyer cannot charge any advance fees unless the consumer has a face to face meeting with the attorney that would be handling the case. This doesn’t imply that you walk into an office, shake hands with a lawyer, then have a legal assistant hand you papers to sign. This meant that the actual lawyer that you talked with, would review the important points of the program along with you at that time. And that lawyer would be the person who would be managing your case. This is just not how these settlement law firms operate.
As for the declaration that only a law firm can provide debt consolidation programs . Well that’s not really true. What the Federal trade commission ruling says is that a company providing credit card debt help can’t ask for advance fees for their services. It also says that they have to base their costs on their overall performance. What this means is they have to charge based upon just how much they are able to help you save.
Not only is this far better for the customer, it also gives that company a motivation to do the absolute best they can for you. The more money they can save you the more money they are able to make. That is good for both sides. Combine that with the truth that you don’t pay for the services before the settlement has been attained. This means that you are going to truly be able to save up a lot more money at a quicker rate and get the debts repaid quicker.
I recommend you make contact with a debt analyst that can go over with you all of your options to see which one is truly best within your situation.