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I am NOT a Collections Lawyer

There are lots of legal specialties. There are space lawyers, oil and gas lawyers, internet lawyers, and customs lawyers. There are also collection lawyers. These are the people you go to when you are having trouble collecting on a debt. They work for banks and other creditors. It is a fairly complicated area of law. I am not a collections lawyer. Unfortunately, there is an apparently well-known collection lawyer named Lawrence M. Friedman in Chicago (he may have retired by now). Occasionally, a police officer shows up at my office to serve a summons to that Lawrence Friedman. It always raises my blood pressure just a bit until we figure out what is going on.

I raise this only to address the enormous amount of e-mail I am now getting about collections law. Most other lawyers in the country are getting the same e-mails. They come primarily from Asia and supposedly on behalf of companies seeking counsel to help them collect delinquent payments from U.S. customers. This would be bread-and-butter work for a collections attorney, if it were real.

The sad reality is that these e-mails are a scam directed at lawyers.

I get as many as five of these a day, every day. Some go into my spam filter, some into my junk folder, but others make it through to my inbox. My question is whether this can possibly still be a worthwhile endeavor for the scamming spammers. Once I get that much mail on a single topic, whether it is an allegedly naked celebrity or a weight-loss plan, I know the mail is worthless. Plus, when was the last time a real potential client picked a lawyer out of the aether and addressed the mail to "Counselor" or "Dear Colleague?"

I hope this is coming to an end. I would like my inbox back.

Full post as published by Customs Law on August 29, 2009 (boomark / email).