Collection law firms: verified public records

Often, yes. A collection law firm can escalate to a lawsuit in its own name, so any letter that threatens suit should be taken seriously and answered within the stated deadline. You keep every right the FDCPA gives you, including the right to demand written validation of the debt, and attorney conduct rules apply to the firm on top of debt collection law.

The firms listed on this page all hold an active Texas third-party debt collector surety bond on the Secretary of State register, the same instrument Texas Finance Code Chapter 392 requires of collection agencies, and this site verifies each filing history against the register the same way it does for agencies.

Not always, and this matters when checking a firm. In New York City, attorneys collecting as part of a law practice can be exempt from the Debt Collection Agency license, so a law firm absent from the city register may be operating legitimately, which is not true of an ordinary collection agency. The New York firms listed on this page hold the city license, which is what lets their history be verified against the public record; a firm that relies on the exemption simply cannot be verified this way and is not listed, which says nothing bad about it.

Accuracy. A law firm that regularly collects debts is a debt collector under the federal FDCPA (settled by the US Supreme Court in Heintz v. Jenkins, 1995), but calling a law practice a collection agency would be wrong, and the practical difference, that a firm can file suit directly, is exactly what a consumer needs to know first.