Professional Negotiators: Going Into Battle Without A Weapon!!
Posted on November 19, 2007
Filed Under Pittsburgh Legal Matters
Some people who have been sued in local courts recently will first find out about the case by receiving a letter from what appears at first to be a law firm. However, if you receive one of these letters, you will soon discover that it is sent by a non-lawyer debt negotiator. Many of these services specialize in consumer debt, like credit cards and home mortgages. They can be amply described in three words: dangerous, dangerous and dangerous!
Why would anyone hire a professional debt negotiator instead of a lawyer in such a serious situation? When the complaint arrives, a responsive pleading must be filed within twenty days, unless an extension is granted. If no responsive pleading is filed and no extension is granted to file within that time, a ten-day notice may be issued under the Rules of Civil Procedure, followed by a default judgment. The whole case can thus be over, with a complete victory for the plaintiff, in about month after service.
With the clock ticking, hiring someone to negotiate a settlement who cannot legally prepare and file an answer makes little sense. Lawyers can and do negotiate settlements every day. But many attempts at negotiation fail, especially when one party believes that it has a strong upper hand. So the defendant is forced to hire a lawyer at the last minute – provided he is even aware that default judgment may be imminent.
Professional negotiators sell their services on the dubious basis that they know exactly how much to offer because they deal with similar creditors every day. They imply that they have some kind of cabalistic knowledge and that you or I, poor fools, would leave money on the table because we didn’t know the secret number. This dubious proposition ignores the obvious fact that negotiation is a test of power and they don’t have much. Every lawyer knows that a litigant often makes an unappealing settlement offer from the comfort zone of the office. He or she will only become truly motivated as the moment of truth draws perilously close – sometimes minutes away in the courtroom. Debt negotiators, who might be likened to warriors without weapons, can never make that moment of truth happen.
The law has come a long way in developing methods like private arbitration, mediation and conciliation as alternatives to expensive litigation. These methods often do work. But part of the reason is that the conflict can ultimately be resolved by force. Speaking softly may be an effective negotiating technique, but doing so while leaning on a big stick is still the approved method.
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