Attorney for Debt Collection
Agencies.

Your agency has done what an agency can do: the letters, the calls, the skip trace, the settlement offers. The account is still open. We are the next step, the Florida law firm that takes the file when the only remaining tools are the ones that require a lawyer, and reports back the way your client expects you to.

Litigation counsel for collection agencies when the letters stop working

An agency lives on the accounts it can resolve without a lawyer. Most of them, it does. The rest are the ones this page is about: the Florida debtor who has stopped answering, the business that disputes the balance but will not put anything in writing, the account where the only thing left is a lawsuit and the client is asking what happens next. Sending that file to a law firm is not a failure of the agency. It is the design of the industry.

What a collection attorney does for an agency

A collection agency and a collection law firm do different things with the same debt. The agency contacts the debtor, negotiates, and reports; it cannot sue, and the law does not let it threaten a suit it cannot bring. A law firm can file suit, obtain a judgment, and use the court's enforcement powers: garnishment, levy, subpoena, proceedings supplementary. We serve as the Florida attorney of record for agencies whose accounts have reached that stage, on commercial claims and, within the consumer-collection rules, on consumer claims.

Often the file resolves before suit. A demand from an attorney's office, on letterhead, from a firm that will actually file, is a different message from the ones the debtor has been ignoring, and a meaningful share of forwarded accounts pay or settle at that stage. When they do not, we file, and we do the enforcement work that turns a judgment into a remittance.

Why this matters to your client relationship

You do not own the account. Your client does, and your client judges you by two things: what comes back and how they were kept informed. A law firm that takes the file and goes silent for four months puts you in the position of guessing when your client calls. A firm that resolves the account by treating the debtor in a way your client's compliance department would not sign off on puts you in a worse one.

The forwarding relationship in commercial collection has a structure, the client-agency-attorney triad, and it works when each party respects the others' roles. We report to the agency, not around it. We follow your client's instructions as relayed by you. We do not solicit the client. And on consumer accounts we operate inside the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and the Florida Consumer Collection Practices Act, because as a law firm regularly collecting consumer debts, we are bound by both, and a violation would land on your client's name as well as ours.

Just suppose

The following is an illustrative example, written to show how the process works. It is not a real client, a real matter, or a promise of any result.

Imagine you manage the commercial desk at a national collection agency. A client that leases drayage chassis and container-handling equipment has placed a portfolio of Florida accounts with you, most of them small logistics operators working the port in Jacksonville. Your collectors have worked the accounts for ninety days. Two-thirds have paid or settled. The rest are silent, and one of them, a trucking company that owes $73,000 in unpaid lease charges, has told your collector to "call the lawyer," which it assumes you do not have.

You forward the file to Florida counsel with the lease, the invoices, and the collector's notes. The attorney demand goes out the same week. The trucking company's owner calls the firm, not the agency, and offers half. The client, through you, declines. Suit is filed in Duval County on the lease and the owner's guaranty. The company answers with a boilerplate denial and a claim that the equipment was defective, which its own maintenance records do not support. The firm moves for summary judgment, and while the motion is pending serves a demand for judgment that would shift attorney's fees to the debtor if it refuses and loses. The debtor's counsel recommends settlement. The account resolves for the full principal plus a portion of interest, paid over six months, secured by a consent judgment.

Throughout, you received status reports on each filing, which you forwarded to your client under your own cover. The client never spoke to the law firm. That is how it is supposed to work.

How the forwarding relationship works

You send the file with whatever the client has: contract, invoices, statements, correspondence, guaranty, collector notes. We review it and tell you, within days, whether the account supports suit, what it will cost, and what we think is collectible. If you and the client approve, we proceed on the agreed terms. We handle consumer accounts only where the documentation supports compliant collection, and we tell you when it does not.

Reporting follows the agency's cadence and format wherever possible. Remittances go through the agency unless the client instructs otherwise. If a debtor disputes, files bankruptcy, or raises a defense that changes the calculus, you hear it from us first.

Common questions

Do you take consumer accounts?

Yes, within the rules that govern them. Consumer accounts require documentation sufficient to validate the debt and are collected in compliance with the FDCPA and Florida's Consumer Collection Practices Act. Where the file does not support that, we will say so.

Will you contact our client?

Not unless you or the client ask us to. The relationship is yours.

What do you need to start?

The underlying agreement or credit application, the invoices or account statements, any guaranty, and your collector's notes. Proof of delivery or performance helps. The more complete the file, the faster the demand goes out.

Can you handle accounts anywhere in Florida?

Yes. We file and enforce in every Florida circuit, from Pensacola to Key West.

The discipline behind the result

Agencies forward files to us because the work gets done the way their clients expect, and because they hear about it. Suit when suit is warranted, enforcement that follows the statute, and a status report before you have to ask for one. Send the file. Call (813) 288-1881.