Legal Question in Civil Litigation in Illinois

Hello,

I am a judgment recovery specialist. In my area of Southern Illinois there are not to many cases where private individuals have judgments against each other. I am seeing a lot of cases involving credit card companies vs individuals. In a majority lot of cases the cc company doesn't receive any money owed to them due to no debtor assets...supposedly. The attorney appears in court for the cc company, papers are filed and the attorney is paid a fee in the $350 to $500 range...case closed.

My question: I use several specialized websites to track debtors to find hidden assets and accounts, other asset locating methods are also used. I wonder if any of the attornies would be interested in partnering up with me to collect hidden assets in these cases? If they would be interested what would be the best way to approach them and the verbiage to use? Credit card companies may shy away from my 50% recovery fee (possibly neogotiable) and not want an attorney to participate with me. Thank you everyone in advance for your replies


Asked on 9/27/10, 8:12 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
Bruce Burdick Burdick Law Firm

As a southern Illinois attorney I recommend to you to call various local bar associations and ask to be allowed to make a pitch at one of their monthly meetings for your service. Attorneys are prohibited by canons of ethics from splitting fees with non-attorneys, so "partnering" is not the answer. You might propose to the attorneys that you would work for them and would do it on a contingency basis for 40% of the recovery. That would leave 10% for the attorney who would then charge the client a 50% contingency in addition to the 350-500 fees currently charged. The goal would, I think, for the attorney, be for you to get sufficient recoveries that the client's 50% would offset the 350-500 fees so the client gets what they want for less using that attorney because that attorney uses you and so the net cost to the client is lower.

I am not interested in doing this myself as I am a patent attorney and I only work on payment in advance or near-certain contingent fees so I do not have collections, thankfully.

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Answered on 10/03/10, 5:14 pm


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