Memberships at Your Legal Leg Up

What they Are, Why You Should Get One, and What it Costs

It is not possible to give pro se debt defendants a simple, pre-packaged plan – no reputable company would try. That’s because the debt collectors themselves have many tricks and techniques, and both the law and the debt collectors are always changing.

That’s why we introduced memberships at Your Legal Leg Up.

Teleconferences

Memberships give us a chance to communicate directly with you – and to hear and address your questions live and in real time. We do that through our weekly teleconferences, which are a tremendous value. You can ask about our materials, but much more importantly than that, you can also ask about strategy for your case, what the debt collectors might be up to, what court rulings mean, and how you might respond to various situations as they arise. If you are defending yourself from a debt collection lawsuit – and probably even if you have a lawyer representing you – you want someone who knows to answer some of your questions in an unbiased and friendly way.

It also helps us to hear what other people are facing, both because it lets you “look down the tracks” to see what is coming or what you might do, and also because it helps give you strength to know that other people are facing the same situation and winning their cases.

Document Bank

We have other important benefits of membership. One of the most important of these benefits is our document bank. That gives you samples and examples of things other people in your situation have done.

Here’s an example of how that can work:

You will want to send “discovery” (questions and requests for documents) to the other side, and you want your discovery to ask the right questions as they apply to your case (our materials help with that). Even when you get them right, though, the debt collectors will often file a lot of bogus objections. It isn’t unusual for them to give you nothing at all in response to your discovery other than objections. Why? Because they want to wear you down and make you give up. They have objections on their computer, and they just cut and paste them onto their answers to you. A paralegal can do it in fifteen minutes and neither the debt collector nor a lawyer really needs to work on them at all.

And they aren’t too picky about what those objections might be, because they know you will have to go through them one at a time if you want to force them to give you anything. Even if you know what you’re doing, you will spend a lot of time, and get very frustrated, dealing with these objections on your way to filing a motion to compel (asking the court to force them to give you the information).

With our document bank, you can do some cutting and pasting yourself. It still isn’t as easy for you as it is for them, because we encourage you not to make random arguments – unlike the debt collectors, you need to know what you are saying and be reasonable. But the document bank goes a long way to leveling the playing field and turns these disputes into ways you can win your case.

And we aren’t just talking about discovery. The document bank contains motions and responses, from motions asking for more time to do something (motions “for continuance” or “additional time”), to the deadlier motions to dismiss or for summary judgment, you will have samples and examples to use for your case.

Member-Only Materials

Some of our members want to be able to read everything on a topic – or on all topics – related to debt law. We don’t think that is necessary, or even a good idea for most people, but if that’s the way you are, you will find a lot of stuff on our site that is for members only. We have a large number of articles and videos available to members only.

Emails and Newsletters

One of the advantages debt collectors have over ordinary people is that they are networked. We counteract that with our communications. As you have probably figured out, our main way of doing that is with our teleconferences, but we do also send out emails weekly that discuss new materials on the site and address new issues that have come up for our members or in the larger debt law community. We sometimes send out newsletters – but mostly we rely on emails and on-site materials.