General Concepts in Discovery as Debt Defendants

When you are being sued by a debt collector it’s important to remember a few things. First, both the debt collector/lawyer and the Judge will tend to underestimate you at first – and possibly for quite a while. They will also tend to overestimate the strength of the debt collection case. They will both, therefore, tend to discount what you say and attempt to rush the case to completion.

This is very much against your interest. It is crucial to your defense that you have time to prepare and that you get the judge, (at least) to take you seriously. Beginning the discovery process as early as possible is important for this reason.

The debt collector may, or may not, be interested in conducting discovery at all. If they are, they will probably ask quite a few outrageous questions – and one of our strategies is to avoid giving them any more information than necessary anyway. This means you will likely object to much of what they do.

If you do that, and they have not already responded to your discovery, they will claim you are evading their questions, etc., etc. Thus getting your discovery to them before they get their to you is important for controlling the manner the discovery proceeds.

And through it all, you will want to keep in mind what is important to the debt collectors and the way they view your case. You may think that the dollars involved in your case are very significant.  To them – not so much.