Fraud lawyers: how to avoid being their victim?

Unfortunately, there are more and more fraudsters even in the areas that are aimed to protect from them. Right you are, what we mean are lawyers and attorneys – fake lawyers and fake attorneys, to be more precise, who care only about their own enrichment. Today we will tell you, how to detect an abusive lawyer and not to become a victim of his or her fraudulent schemes.

Scheme № 1. Free legal services.

Such a scheme is a very foundation of the fraud lawyers’ work. Such cases start on – line as a rule, when a lawyers company website’s visitor sees a pop-up box with an offer to contact online consultant to express the root of the problem and to receive the necessary assistance “immediately”. There is no need to explain that no one is going to provide any assistance online. The aim of the consultant is to get the visitor’s phone number and persuade him or her to come to the office for further actions.

If a potential customer comes to the office, a lawyer of “initial reception” starts working with him/her, but still he isn’t going to provide any help. His task is to sign a contract with a client, promising a 100% guarantee and a long – awaited solving of the problem. But in reality it is nothing but the next part of their scam. At the final step the case goes to a lawyer that asserts the claims to the court without any care for consequences. How could he care for them? He doesn’t know the details of the case and obliged to run the case he got from other lawyers. It is logical that such cases end with a waste of the client’s time and swindling him or her out of money. Generally speaking, “Free legal service” is a trick that makes a client pay for imposed services of law quality.

The qualification of such lawyers should be discussed separately. It is enough to visit the job offering websites and find job offers for lawyers that do not even need to have a degree in law. Qualities that are valued in such companies are “ability to convince and persuade”, “good communication skills” and “desire to earn more money”.

At the final part of discussion of this topic, we will tell you that such lawyers only help the clients to make a complaint that you are able to make without their participation. Using their help, you will get the only possible result: money leakage from the family income and no guarantees.

Tip: According to the federal law № 324, Veterans of the Great Patriotic war, disabled people, victims of emergency cases and other socially vulnerable population groups have a right for free legal services. If you are not a representative of these groups of people, you do not have a right for any free service.

Scheme2. A star from the sky.

Only fraud – lawyers can promise a 100%guarantee. Here we will talk about such “magicians”, who are able to do anything to attract new clients.

Competition on the legal services market is vast and some of the “players” of this market promise to do even ‘impossible”. For example, if a chance to win the case is 1:10000, they would be assuring you in a successful outcome. But they never refine, what is a probability of it. As a result, they ignore deceived clients or say that the customer should pay for a service provided but not for a result, as they “did what they could, it is just that the stars have not aligned”.

Tip. Do not believe the lawyers or attorneys who promise a 100% guarantee. There are more chances to win the case with a help of an expert who can carefully weigh all pros and cons and who would be able to forge a clear vision of the case. And yes – it would probably cost much more expensive.

Scheme 3. Mirror – companies.

Some of the fraudsters like to pretend to be the representatives of big and well – known lawyers companies. That is why sometimes you could fine the names of famous lawyers and attorneys on unknown websites. There are two options for them.

First, there is a certain company N, on the website of which you can find information about the company’s cooperation with a famous lawyer or attorney, and what is more, that this famous expert provides the clients of the company with free legal services. If the customer contacts the office of a company, staff members say that the “famous” lawyer is “busy today”, but instead of him, they can offer a service of another expert, who is as good as the famous expert and would be glad to help to solve the client’s problem. In reality, famous experts in the area of law have no idea about their cooperation with any lawyers companies and the company’s “professional” lawyer would only cheat the client’s money without any help.

Second, fraud – lawyers companies copy the famous companies’ websites and catch the inattentive clients who do not see the difference. One way to avoid it is to look for some links on the company’s cooperation with the Government entities. If there are some, then be sure that you are on the cheaters’ website. They would promise you the cooperation with Consumer Protection and Human Welfare, that is a guarantee of the success.

Tip. Be more attentive and remember that the Government entities never cooperate with any lawyers companies.

Scheme 4. Fast trial.

Before, we had an article about so – called fast trials. Some fraudster – companies would promise you to set the time of a trial in two months or a month or a week, just to make you pay.

We remind you that the minimum term of a bankruptcy trial is 6 months (in practice even more) and almost the same terms for other areas of law. All lawyers and attorneys know, that a 2 months trial is an exceedingly rare case that almost never happen in practice. Honest lawyers would warn you about it and would never promise you to solve the problem in a minute.

Another trick of such companies is signing the fixed-term contracts. After it they would be insisting on additional payments if you need to prolong the contract.

The moral of this paragraph is that haste would make waste.

Scheme 5. Law seminars.

Fraud lawyers do not only deceive the customers but also deceive other lawyers. For this reason they arrange different seminars and trainings, where they promise to share the most effective approaches of work and to improve the skills. One of the interlocutors of our website shared his experience.

“At one of the legal forums I noticed an advertisement of a representative of a self-regulatory organization of arbitration managers that was saying that it is enough to attend a few seminars to become an expert in the area of bankruptcy. The speaker claimed that he had 12 years of practice, for which he managed to conduct more than 3000 bankruptcy processes, but at the website of the Arbitration Court it was written that this lawyer had only 22 cases in common. There is no need to say that his reputation was under the question. I attended the course and understood that people, who hoped to become familiar with a process of bankruptcy, would not get any useful knowledge. The lawyers are trained to say: “We would cancel the debts for sure” before they receive the client’s money and after it they would say: “There is nothing to be done about it, these are requirements of the law”. And some “experts” even go further: they can make the head of a legal entity, which is in debt, suffer from residual liability”.

Lawyers, as well as the doctors, have the main rule - "do not harm". But fraudsters and their followers are able to spoil even the cases that are impossible not to win. People, who attend such courses, very often do not understand that in some cases it is impossible to start a bankruptcy trial, because it would for sure make the head of a legal entity suffer from residual liability. That was a result of a trial we mentioned above and the sums as a rule are enormous – from 2 to 150 million roubles.

Tip: before starting to attend any trainings or seminars, check the trials, conducted by the speaker, on the website of the Arbitration Court. Few trials, lack of a debtor’s property should warn you as well as the debt repayment by the debtor himself or residual liability of the persons, controlling the debtor.

P.S.:  The editorial office of “Rusbankrot” contacted many participants of the bankruptcy trials investigated one more fraudsters’ scheme. Some unfair managers threaten to use the residual liability if the debtor refuses to pay. In this case you can contact a lawyers association to look for other executors.