An Interesting Letter.

Somewhere around October 22 I received a rather interesting letter. This letter could be summed up as "Hey, we see you're being sued and don't have any representation. You know, we're a law firm with a lot of experiences in cases like yours... We might even be able to get you some money if they screwed up in their collections attempts... Wanna hire us?"

Now, I have no money. I have no income, so I have no way of paying for a lawyer. That's why I filed in pro se, which is legalese for I'm defending myself without the protection of a lawyer. If I had the money I would certainly hire someone to represent me, it's the easiest way to gain the full benefit of their schooling and years of experience in matters that are mostly way over my head. Even so, if I had the money for a lawyer, I still wouldn't hire a bottom feeder that found my case in the public database and decided to take a shot with a professional looking form letter. Still, since I don't have the money to hire a lawyer, I can certainly afford to mine the bottom feeders for useful information.

The third subheading of the packet included with their letter is titled What are the Laws That Protect You?. Here is something useful. There is a class of laws that protect consumers from predatory actions of debt buyers. Primarily the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (or FDCPA). That sounds rather important to me; Google finds a Wikipedia article, the full text of the statute, and a pretty good breakdown of the law into plain terms. Reading through the last article at Expertlaw.com doesn't look like there's much I'd be able to do on my own, but it does mention that Illinois, the state where I live and whose court system is handling the law suit. That brings me to another Google search, Illinois FDCPA, brings me back to an article at IllinoisLegalAid.org.

Reading through all of this, I believe I would need to prove that the debt buying agencies have violated the terms of the FDCPA. I don't think I would be able to do so, but I've put a call into the office of the lawyers who sent me the letter that started me on this tangent. Maybe an interview with them will get me some insight into how to go about finding whether the FDCPA has been violated and how to make a valid argument if it has.