There is no hard or fast rule regarding when to hire an attorney to handle your collections efforts. Since you, the business owner, are the one who is most aware (we hope) of the current state of your business and your accounts receivables, it is completely dependent on you to decide when it is the best time to hire a debt collection lawyer.
When to hire a lawyer can sometimes be a factor of how past due your accounts receivables are. This, of course, depends on your own accounts receivables policies. At other times it can be a factor of simply needing to hire the services of a professional to handle your collections so that you can concentrate on conducting your sales-generating business activities. Or it can be a factor of both.
If you’ve identified the problem as being an issue of non-paying customers, a good rule to employ would be that if several letters and phone calls over a period of, say, thirty days has failed to yield any response or results from your client, then consider hiring an attorney to handle the collections for you. If the issue is that you’re spending an inordinate amount of time on collections, hiring an attorney to handle them for you may be worth the cost to you.
When hiring an attorney it is always important to ensure that their objective is not merely to collect money from your late-paying or no-paying customers, nor should you hire an attorney who employs aggressive or adversarial tactics in his or her collections activities. A critical function of a collections attorney should be to facilitate the healthy continuity of the business relationship.
The Jayaram Law routinely and successfully assists its clients in their business-to-business (b2b) collection needs. We take pride in obtaining payment on accounts receivables without fracturing critical business relationships or engaging in time-consuming and costly litigation efforts.
If you need business debt collection services conducted in a professional manner, contact our B2B (business-to-business) debt collection law firm by calling 312.454.2859 or visiting www.jayaramlaw.com.