CCR2 Litigation


How to choose the right lawyer for your business


Making the right choice of provider means ensuring that you choose a specialist that has the right offering and culture for you


Frank Hanafin Director of commercial services, Moriarty Law Frank.Hanafin@Moriartylaw.co.uk


All law firms are regulated by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority and there are hundreds of law firms who are able to act on your behalf. However most law firms have certain


specialities and it makes sense to ensure that your chosen partner is well versed in the recovery of consumer debt.


The basics Those with electronic links to the Claim Production Centre can process volume- work quicker and more cheaply than those who do not have these links; and so, if they do not, this should sound alarm bells as to their level of experience. A good lawyer should be able to advise


you on your litigation strategy. Some of the key issues here are: lWhich cases to choose. l Your enforcement options. l How to protect vulnerable customers and ensure that defences are dealt with in a timely and cost-effective manner.


Scoring capabilities Ideally, your chosen law firm should have access to scoring capabilities, utilising credit-reference data to ensure, not only that the right commercial decision to sue is being made, but also to remove vulnerable or unsuitable cases so as to ensure that customers are treated fairly.


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The score will immediately preclude any cases that are vulnerable or in hardship, or any that do not have the appropriate financial ability to be included in a litigation recovery strategy


As an example, our own LawScore takes


portfolios of non-performing debt and uses a bespoke credit score to select the accounts that are appropriate for litigation. Moriarty Law then provides an end-to-


end litigation process using a collective conditional fee agreement (no win no fee) on the selected accounts. The score will immediately preclude any


cases that are vulnerable or in hardship, or any that do not have the appropriate financial ability to be included in a litigation recovery strategy. We constantly monitor the effect of this


score and have found it to be almost linear that as the score increases, the percentage of repaid accounts increases with it.


www.CCRMagazine.co.uk Depending on the age and quality of the


debt in question, we would expect between 10% and 20% of the original portfolio to pass this process. At the pre-score screening stage, all


accounts will be checked to ensure that they are living as stated, that there are no existing county court judgments, and there is no data that would preclude the account from the next stage such as insolvency or deceased data.


Encouraging contact Contact with the customer should always be attempted and, clearly, if an alternative to litigation can be made, then this will often be in the interests, not only of the client, but also that of the customer too, saving both costs and time. So what will your chosen partner do to


encourage contact? A letter before action is clearly a legal


requirement, but this should not be the sole means of encouraging engagement. A good lawyer will have qualified staff to engage with customers.


Company culture In today’s collections industry, company culture is crucial because it allows abstract company policies to be turned into real results for clients and the best possible outcomes for consumers.


January 2017


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