[llsf]

Seems like there are some money left on the table.

Should someone build a small company to defend all those people solely based on some contingency fee (well a tiny percentage of what they owe or would pay if they lose).

If I owe $5,000, a lawyer takes the case, and prevent me to pay the $5,000 for a $500 fee, and I never hear again about the debt collector, that seems a win-win.

Those debt collector would start to think twice before going to court, and if really working, debt collector would start to think twice before buying debts at the first place.

It could be automated, with a single website, where I enter few details about my case (or the website contacts me based on scrawling the dockets), give me free advices to fight it myself (e.g. ask debt collector for all communication to only be done by mail, as allow by law, ask them for proof of debt, etc.). And if it escalate to court, then a lawyer would be assigned to represent me.

Looks like some software could fight this court scaling issue, by fighting before it goes to court, and then making it less predictable for debt collector to go the court route.

[imtringued]

You seem to misunderstand something. Debt collectors aren't winning cases of illegitimate debt. They are winning legitimate court cases that the defendant simply ignored. Even if you bring a lawyer to court that doesn't mean that you won't have to pay the debt. That $5000 debt was probably bought for less than $500 by the debt collector and the debt collector is willing to settle for something like $1000 which is still significantly less than the original debt.

[DanBC]

If people don't know about the debt and it goes to court and a default judgment is issued, well, we don't know if the original debt is real or not because it didn't get tested in the court.

[bequanna]

How would this differ from existing debt settlement firms?