Earlier this week I was meeting with a client who was in the process of hiring me to represent her in the Chapter 7 bankruptcy process. As we were both signing the retainer agreement, I explained as I usually do at that point that now I was her lawyer. This means she has my permission to use my name if she needs to in the event that creditors manage to reach her by telephone.
These days most of my clients are pretty good at avoiding the calls from creditors by just watching their caller ID. It’s not unusual to be receiving between twenty to fifty calls a day from bill collectors by the time someone finally decides to come see me. I’ve carried on before about how people tend to wait too long and most should have come in sooner. Some of the creditor calls are hard to avoid, however, because they are tricky and disguise their caller ID. One who called me recently had a caller ID that said “Swiss Miss.”
So I tell my clients when they hire me that when one of those creditors gets though on the phone for whatever reason, my advice is to say something like this: “I’ve hired a lawyer to represent me in Chapter 7 bankruptcy. He’s instructed me to not speak with you, to not say anything, except that his name is David Kelly and his number is 952-544-6356. If you have questions you should call him. Goodbye.”
Once they hear this and confirm that it’s true – by calling me – many of the creditors will stop calling. As far as I know there is no legal requirement that they do so until we actually file the case, but as a practical matter they know that they might as well focus their energy elsewhere.
When I went over this with the client who I referred to above, she made a remark to the effect that she wasn’t necessarily very happy about being able to say I was her lawyer. She wished she had not needed to hire me. I replied that, if this was any comfort, there seemed to be quite a few people out there who were happy to claim I was their lawyer even though they had never met me.
Yes that’s right, I have real clients like the woman who just hired me, and I also have fake clients. Besides the calls from creditors to confirm that I’ve been hired by my real clients, I am also receiving calls from creditors who have been given my name by people I have never heard of. There tend to be about two calls a week like that. I guess they must think I’m good if they want to take my name in vain like that.
So I said to my new client that I had real clients and fake clients, and at least she was a real client. To that she replied, “well I have real friends and fake friends.”
I thought my new client’s remark was quite profound. At least it seemed profound to me. I asked her permission to quote her here, anonymously of course.
