Tag Archive for: Membership

Our 20-20 Membership


Our 20-20 Membership

People often ask me what they should get first from Your Legal Leg Up. To me, the answer is obvious, and it’s both the first and last thing you’ll pay for in most cases: the 20-20 membership. It’s the best we offer both in value and price. It’s so much better than the other options, in fact, that I almost feel guilty when people buy anything else, but sometimes they do, and there could be reasons one of the other memberships would be right for you, so I’ll talk briefly about your other options at the end of this article.

Teleconferences

All of our memberships include access to our teleconferences, and I’m not aware of any other program that offers anything like that.

What teleconferences are is an opportunity to ask questions in real time. You can ask about what things mean, what the bad guys might be driving at or trying to accomplish with something they’re doing, and how you might respond. We’ll help direct you to sources of information or guide your research. Sometimes you might just want to know where you are in your case, what a word means, or how to say or search for something… stuff like that.

Sometimes you’ll just need some encouragement and a reminder to keep up the good work because
working steadily is important but difficult in legal work, where there are deadlines that can be months away, but you forget how much time things take even aside from doing the work itself.

And sometimes you’ll want to hear other people who in the same boat as you are. Debt defense pro se can be a lonely process, but there are a lot of people trying to defend themselves. You can talk to them, and we offer encouragement and coaching as well as more substantive help too. People who use it find it enormously helpful. We can’t offer legal advice – you’d have to pay between $150 – 250 per hour to get that – but consider it a very active form of coaching and help.

Teleconferences currently happen three times per week and members can come to any and all of them. They’re scheduled for an hour each, but often go above that amount of time because I want everyone with a question to get it answered. If need be, we’ll increase the number of teleconferences per week to make it easier to get those questions answered.

Fees and Prices – Why the 20-20 Membership is Best

Most of our memberships involve a registration fee and a monthly payment, but the 20-20 only requires one payment for a full year that will be less than the other memberships for a year. The other memberships offer discounts on our digital products, but with the 20-20 you get all the digital products for free.

In other words, for one price you get all of our digital products and access to all the materials on the website for a year in addition to the teleconferences. The digital products which are designed to make the whole process easier and more effective, and the many articles and videos should help you get a deeper understanding of specific topics as well. You don’t get any “bonuses” because you get everything with the membership.

Materials You’ll Get – You Get ALL Digital Products we Offer

Maybe that’s all you need to know, but if you like to see it all before you make a decision, I’ll say you get all the digital products on our comprehensive product page.  This includes numerous reports, including among others, Got Debt, Assignment Contracts, and Three Weaknesses Almost All Debt Collectors Have, the Manuals for Debt Litigation, Debt Negotiation, and Credit Repair, and all the Motions Packets, including the Motion to Vacate Default, Motion to Dismiss, Motion to Compel, and Motion for Summary Judgment. There will be others, too. You will also get our Model Discovery Pack and, if you live in either California or Pennsylvania, products relevant to those areas.

And you’ll get access to all the hundreds of articles on our site. Many are free to the general public, but many others are restricted by level of membership. As a 20-20 member you get them all. Go here to sign up for the membership now, be sure to click on the 20-20 membership option.

Why Such a Good Deal?

I know this is going to sound like sales talk, but the 20-20 is a much better offer than we’ve ever made, and some explanation might help it make sense. There are two reasons, one selfish, and one not so selfish, for making this offer.

The selfish reason is that I’ve noticed that when people get sued they regard the law suit as a major priority and will pay what they have to (if they can) to give themselves a chance to win. That makes a lot of sense to me. But if they sign up for a monthly membership, there often comes a time when the case is less scary, or there comes a time when they need to buy a product but don’t have the money. So they cut corners and skip a product. That lowers their chance of winning, which isn’t good for Your Legal Leg Up’s reputation. It’s very important that you all win if at all possible, so making a deal which will never make you cut corners makes good business sense to me. And it’s why I’m here in the first place.

The other reason is just that I can do it. The products are here (and the work has been done, though they are sometimes revised), and I want you to be able to do your best work and get your best results without always having to sweat gallons. You’ll have plenty to do, but we can make things a lot easier. So I want to do that and am fine with making a little less than I might in to do it.

The Other Memberships

I mentioned the other types of membership a little bit above. Those are the Gold, Platinum and Diamond memberships. The main advantage with them is that if you show up and the debt collector gives up just because you do, you’ll save money because you won’t be paying for things you don’t us. Don’t laugh, that can happen. And it does happen maybe 1 percent of the time. They’re looking for an easy, automatic victory, and just by answering you make them decide to go away. Like I said, that happens about 1% of the time as far as I can tell. To be frank, nobody that’s happened to felt bad about getting the 20-20, but it’s a fact that a monthly membership would have cost less in that situation. Just about any other situation, though, and the 20-20 will save you a bunch of money and a ton of time and worry.

It’s the way to go for almost everybody. Go here to sign up for the membership now, be sure to click on the 20-20 membership option.

Debt Defense in 20-20 Vision

Introducing the 20-20 Memberships

We are introducing two new types of membership, the 20-20 and 20-20 plus. Right now, the difference is just how long they last, but it is likely that there will be some special content or materials for 2020+ before too long.

If you have watched the videos at the Overview of Litigation page, you know why we’re offering these products and why I think they’re a great deal. I will outline the new memberships briefly below.

First and mainly, the 20-20 membership will be a “pay-once” program. For a flat price you will receive all membership benefits for 12 months. This should get you all the way through to the end of any litigation you are involved in now. You won’t buy anything else from us or be charged again. Here’s what the 20-20 membership includes:

Teleconferences – currently we have them twice per week. Depending on need, that number could increase so that people regularly have an opportunity to ask questions in real time.

Access to member-only materials, including what used to be called the document bank. This gives you access to materials that have been created for a variety of different real-life situations as well as a large number of articles addressing the situations most debt litigants encounter. In other words, the 20-20 is a full membership, and you get everything members ever get.

Free access to all of our products. You won’t have to buy anything anymore. If you need a motion to compel pack, for example, you can download it for free. And that’s true of all of our materials that are currently for sale.

Specifically, that includes the Debt Defense Litigation Manual, the Three Weaknesses Almost every Debt Collector Has and how to Use them, materials on assignment contracts (not yet, but soon, a product), the Legal Research and Analysis report, and much more.

Comparison to Other Memberships

You can check the prices, but you’ll find that, added up, these materials and benefits would cost at least $1,000, so this is by far the lowest price we’ve ever offered. The 20-20 (regular) will cost $250 for 12 months, and the 20-20+ will cost $300 for 18 months. These prices will stay good at least through February 15.

Our other memberships are designed more on a pay-as-you-go basis. They all include at least two teleconferences per week, with the possibility of increasing as necessary to allow you to get questions asked and answered. Beyond that, they offer general access to most documents in what used to be called the document bank. And they have a graduated discount on specific products you might need. Our goal was to let people get and pay for what they need but not other stuff.

That turns out not to be ideal for some, since it involves repeated billing (monthly) and occasional extra expense when they need a new product. If you prefer, though, this membership remains available.

Our 20-20 memberships eliminate the repeated and occasional costs. Pay once up front and get it all for a year (20-20) or year and a half (20-20+). The overall price will be much lower than one of the other memberships if you end up needing one or more products, as most members will. I say that because if you need a discovery pack and any one motion pack you’re already saving money, and it is likely that you will need those things. Many members need much more.

Overview of Debt Litigation

The new 20:20 project –

New Year, New Kind of Membership

There are three videos in this series. Together, they describe the debt litigation process and almost everything you will encounter as you go through it. We have products for every situation, but these videos are more about the process than our products. Below the videos you will see more about a new product that brings all of our other materials together. If you prefer what we have previously offered, those things will still be available.

Part One

The debt and debt litigation industry.

Part 2

Debt Defense and why it can be so difficult

Part 3

Why Pro se works and how you can do it.

Here is the 20-20 Membership

We are introducing two new types of membership, the 20-20 and 20-20 plus. Right now, the difference is just how long they last, but it is likely that there will be some special content or materials for 2020+ before too long.

If you have watched the videos above, you know why we’re offering these products and why I think they’re a great deal. I will outline the new memberships briefly below.

First and mainly, the 20-20 membership will be a “pay-once” program. For a flat price you will receive all membership benefits for 12 months. This should get you all the way through to the end of any litigation you are involved in now. You won’t buy anything else from us or be charged again. Here’s what the 20-20 membership includes:

Teleconferences – currently we have them twice per week. Depending on need, that number could increase so that people regularly have an opportunity to ask questions in real time.

Access to member-only materials, including what used to be called the document bank. This gives you access to materials that have been created for a variety of different real-life situations as well as a large number of articles addressing the situations most debt litigants encounter. In other words, the 20-20 is a full membership, and you get everything members ever get.

Free access to all of our products. You won’t have to buy anything anymore. If you need a motion to compel pack, for example, you can download it for free. And that’s true of all of our materials that are currently for sale.

Specifically, that includes the Debt Defense Litigation Manual, the Three Weaknesses Almost every Debt Collector Has and how to Use them, materials on assignment contracts (not yet, but soon, a product), the Legal Research and Analysis report, and much more.

You can check the prices, but you’ll find that, added up, these materials and benefits would cost at least $1,000, so this is by far the lowest price we’ve ever offered. The 20-20 (regular) will cost $250 for 12 months, and the 20-20+ will cost $300 for 18 months. This membership should be available for sale as soon as December 27, and the prices will stay good through February 15.

Click here for a more detailed description and comparison of these new memberships to the other memberships.

Memberships with our site

Memberships with Your Legal Leg Up

Our membership is a tremendous value and an effective way to level the playing field between you and a debt collector.

After years of providing debt defendants what they need to beat the debt collectors, I have figured out a way to make beating the debt collectors less stressful and time-consuming. If you’d like to save time and stress while improving your chances of victory, keep reading.

How do you “Level the Playing Field” with the Debt Collectors?

As I have often pointed out, the debt collectors rarely have the evidence they need to win a case when they file suit. Instead, they rely on people defaulting or giving up. That’s how they get away with adding illegal fees so often or suing people who never owed any money – or suing for debts they don’t own.

The debt collectors have designed their litigation process to make it more likely that people will give up – they “tilt” the playing field so that fighting them to obtain justice and fair play is always up hill for you. From Petitions alleging the same debt three or four different ways (making it look like you might owe three times as much as they even say you do) to “fake” affidavits of robo-signers swearing to things about which they have no knowledge, to fake account statements and bogus notices – all these things are designed to trick or intimidate people into giving up. Many of these illegal or immoral tactics have been “business as usual” for the debt collectors. They’re notorious for dirty tricks.

And the debt collectors also start with some “institutional” advantages when they sue people for debt – they do this all the time, you know. The debt collectors have associations of other debt collectors and lawyers who provide them the latest information and court decisions nationally, or just contacts to help them strategize how to deal with your case. They have “document banks” – computer files of petitions, motions, discovery, etc. that they know have worked in cases before. These give them a big advantage: they can draft a petition and serve discovery with a few keystrokes by a paralegal, whereas you are left to spend hours responding. They know what works because they know what is happening in the hundreds of thousands of cases like yours that get filed every year.

How do you neutralize the debt collectors’ advantages and level the playing field?

Introducing Your Legal Leg Up Memberships

In order to counteract the advantages of the debt collectors I have created two types of membership with Your Legal Leg Up: Gold and Platinum. These memberships will allow me to provide you more and better service, give you expanded access to helpful materials, and keep you updated on the latest strategies and techniques that people are using to beat the debt collectors. You will have your own “document banks” where you will be able to download documents that have been used successfully by other people in fighting debt collectors so you don’t have to spend ten times as much time as the debt collectors do on simple documents. And you will special access to me and – more importantly – to other people like you who are actually fighting the debt collectors.

Benefits of Membership

As I mentioned above, there are four main features of membership: expanded access to materials, keeping up to date, connecting with others, and creating and building a document bank of documents you can convert to your own use without a ton of trouble.

Expanded Availability of Services

Through the newsletter and members-only homepage, you will receive updates, alerts, and reports and the tried-and-true, easy to understand materials in the ever-expanding “members-only” section of our website. Members will have access not only to the free access videos, but also to our extensive members-only video collection and the Your Legal Leg Up Video Series–now available ONLY to members, previously sold for $149 and available online.

Keeping Current

With the new membership comes a free subscription to Fightdebt!, official newsletter of Your Legal Leg Up. Every month it will give you the latest news in debt litigation as well as special tips on debt litigation, consumer issues, and credit repair. This is another benefit that is available only to members, valued at $49/year. You will also get new videos, reports and alerts as they happen.

Connecting with Others

Although some of the other benefits of membership may be more tangible and obvious, I actually think this benefit is going to be one of the most important benefits of membership. We will start with a members-only blog (which I will mediate), and this will allow more freewheeling contact between members. It is also my goal to connect those who want to be connected to other people who are from the same state. It’s hard to overestimate the advantage that comes with being able to talk to someone else going through the same thing, and working on pleadings and motions (for example) together could even make the process fun. Monthly teleconferences are free for members so callers can benefit from hearing one anothers’ questions and experiences, and a teleconference connections webpage also provides a forum on which participants may share and connect.

Software

Some people do not have a word processing program that will help them create professional documents or cut and paste documents from the document bank. Members will receive a link to a free word processor which will fill that need. Likewise, for ease of viewing, members will be provided a link to a video player that will let them play or download videos from the site.

Gotta Go Gold

Introducing Debt Litigation Memberships

The solution to the advantages debt collectors have when they bring suit against people who can’t afford lawyers.

Since you’re here, you probably already know that although most debt collectors begin litigation against consumers without the evidence they need – or even any idea whether that evidence might exist – they file suit and usually win. This is because most people don’t fight back, of course. But even if you do fight back you start with some obstacles that make the whole process more difficult for you than the debt collectors.

The Institutional Advantages of the Debt Collectors are:

  • familiarity with the cases and law
  • the ability to handle them in “bulk;”
  • associations with other lawyers for moral and physical support and information; and
  • document banks of files that can be easily changed to apply to your case.

You have some advantages, too, though. The case means more to you than it does to the debt collector, and so it makes sense for you to work harder than they do. And if you do defend yourself (with a little help), you will likely expose the weaknesses of their case – namely that they lack the evidence (which in many cases does not exist at all) they need to prove their case against you. And even if the evidence can be found, your fighting back will probably make the case too expensive for the debt collectors to want to keep chasing you. Thus they very often will drop the case and walk away from you.

Our new memberships are designed to help you neutralize the advantages of the debt collector while exploiting your advantages with less trouble, annoyance, and anxiety.

How Membership Neutralizes the Advantages of the Debt Collectors

The advantage of familiarity is largely a factor of experience and so cannot be directly neutralized, but to offset that lack of experience, the memberships provide greater access to articles and videos, to the staff at Your Legal Leg Up, to member forums and to other members. where members can trade stories about their cases (and the companies suing them – often identical, always similar). The sense of solidarity can break down the sense of isolation that so many of my customers and clients have related to me.

Plus, we have made our document banks available to members so that they can use them as samples or even choose from a collection of possible arguments and cut and paste some of the documents they need to prepare. Of course this won’t completely nullify the debt collectors’ time advantage. In the very early stages of the debt litigation the debt collectors will still be handling your case on a “bulk” case basis, but as the case moves to the discovery phase, the time advantage will shift to you because, as I have often pointed out, lawyers are always “on the clock,” and if they have to spend significant time on your case it rapidly becomes unprofitable.

You will still spend more time on your case than they do – because they don’t really care whether they win or not – they know most people will just give up. You have to care, though, because it’s your money they have in their sights. The amounts aren’t large or significant to the debt collectors (no matter how much they’re suing you for), but they obviously can make a big difference to you. Debt collection lawyers typically charge at least $200 per hour of time. How long would you work for $200? We’ll help you work smarter, too.

Click here to learn about Gold Membership.

 

 

For People Sued or Threatened with Debt Suit

Read more

Membership and Why You Should Get One

Read more

Helping Pro Se Debt Defendants – Letter to new visitors

If you’re a pro se debt defendant or thinking about doing that, welcome to our site.

If you are already representing yourself in a debt lawsuit – or if you think you might want to – you will find the help you need here. In addition, you will find hope and encouragement to take the steps you need to take to protect your rights.

It may seem like the deck is stacked against you, but you have an excellent chance to win and get out of this in good shape. That’s because of the way the system is designed – the debt collectors run a factory, and that leaves you plenty of opportunities to protect yourself. We tell you why, below.

Encouragement

As you look at this site, you will probably notice that we spend a lot of time trying to persuade people they can defend themselves from debt collection law suits. The main challenge in self-representation is often just being able to make yourself take the next step. It can seem hopeless or hopelessly complicated, so taking any action can require a leap of faith. We want to help you with that, because most people who represent themselves with our help actually do win.

Tools

Of course it takes more than encouragement. You have to do some right things, but debt law is not all that difficult to understand. With some basic help you will have an advantage in defending your rights.

With a little courage, and help from this site, you will be able to defend yourself competently. Enough to make them take notice. Enough to cost them money. And, often, more than enough to win or make them go away and leave you alone.

You’ll learn something pretty great about yourself on the way. You have power, and you can defend yourself from people who are trying to take things away from you.

sometimes good things come from bad

Good can come of bad

About the Debt Industry

These are the plain facts as far as we know them.

No one really knows exactly how many debt lawsuits are filed each year. The numbers are not kept in any central location. Our guess is that the number is at least a million per year.

No one really knows exactly how many of these suits are won by default, or even how many actually get served on the defendants. And of those that do get served and defended, no one actually knows how many are won by defendants. The number that lawyers who defend many of these cases usually use is that between 80 and 90 percent of the cases that get served are won by the debt collectors by default. We would estimate from our own experience and observation that around 90-95 percent of the cases are disposed of without a defense –i.e., that defendants either default or settle on the day of court by agreeing to pay everything claimed in the lawsuit.

If that seems like a big number, it is. In most kinds of law the default and give-up rate is much, much smaller. But this will work out to your advantage if you will actually fight.

Of the lawsuits that are defended, no one really knows how many are won by the defendants or the debt collectors, or what the terms of any settlements actually are (nationally). From our experience and research, we would estimate that at least 80 percent of cases that are defended with any significant effort and knowledge are “won” by defendants. We consider a settlement for a small fraction of the amount sought a victory for the defendant.

Of the lawsuits defended pro se by users of YourLegalLegUp, most result in dismissal without payment, and almost all the rest result in settlement for what you might call a “token amount.” It would appear that members of Your Legal Leg Up do much better than those represented  by lawyers who do not specialize in debt defense.

A Caution: Not every customer has told me the outcome of his or her case.

Debt defense help

You are not alone

Why It Works This Way

The reason it works this way is not magic. It’s simply that debt collectors generally do not have the materials they need to win their lawsuit when they file suit against you.

Because they win most of their cases without a fight, it isn’t worth the expense of getting lawsuit materials before they need them, and the people who sold them the debt do not want to be troubled by it any more. The original creditors actually resist giving the debt collectors the documents they would need to beat you and sometimes destroy the records or make the debt collector promise not to seek them. In other words, the debt industry works by getting people to give up. If you fight – and keep fighting for a while – they may well lose interest or simply lack what it takes to beat you in court.

Lawyers who specialize in debt defense know that debt collectors do not have the materials they need to win and have to spend money to get them. These lawyers know how to expose the weaknesses of the debt collectors’ cases and force the debt collectors to spend money trying to get the evidence they need and defending against counterclaims and motions. The debt collectors know these lawyers and what they can do and choose not to fight most of the time.

Lawyers who do not specialize in debt defense often suggest you settle the case right away. They do not know what debt collectors have or need and find it expensive to try to defend the cases. They often tell their clients that it will cost more to defend than is in dispute in the case. And the debt collectors know these lawyers are not familiar with the debt collection business and take advantage of them.

Pro se defendants who get YourLegalLegUp materials know what the lawyers who specialize know, but they are inexperienced in the courtroom and have to get used to the way courts work.

The lawyers for the debt collectors do not know what the pro se defendants know (at first) and (at first) do not expect or believe that the pro se defendants will continue to fight. As they do continue to fight, however, the pro se defendants become more experienced and comfortable in the courtroom, and the debt collectors become more aware of what the defendants know. They become willing to settle on much better terms because they can see that continuing to litigate will lose them money. As far as I can tell, the longer the pro se defendant is willing to keep fighting, the better the terms get, and often the debt collectors drop the case because they do not want to lose money.