Course
Collections 101
The life of a debt, from the bank that charged it off to the money going back. Written for someone who started at a collections law firm this week and has never seen how any of it fits together.
Written for: New hires at creditor-side collections law firms — collectors, mailroom and intake staff, paralegals, and anyone who has to understand the process before they can do the job.
Where the work comes from
Two ways an account reaches your firm, and why the difference decides almost everything that follows.
- Where the debt comes fromCharge-off, placement and purchase — the three events that decide who owns the account on your screen and what your firm is allowed to do with it. · 14 min
- What a placement actually isA placement is a contract, a data file and a set of standards you will be measured against. This is what is inside one and what each part governs. · 15 min
The people
Who actually works at a collections law firm, what each role does all day, and why the law polices the line between the attorneys and everyone else.
- Who does what at a collections firmA small legal core on a large operating floor: collectors, supervisors, paralegals, attorneys, compliance, the mailroom, and ops — and the doctrine that decides where the line sits. · 15 min
The daily work
Paper in, calls out, calls in. Three operations that between them account for most of what a collections firm does every day.
- The mailroomEverything that arrives — post, fax, email, portal uploads — lands here, and some of it has to stop work on an account within hours. This is why the mailroom is a compliance function and not a post room. · 16 min
- Outbound callingAttempts, contacts and conversations are three different things. How an outbound operation is actually structured, and the rules that shape it. · 16 min
- Inbound callsThe consumer called you. That changes the tempo, the risk and what has to happen in the first thirty seconds. · 14 min
- Skip tracing: finding the right personWhat skip tracing is, the data vendors firms actually run — TLOxp, Accurint, Experian, idiCORE, CLEAR — the waterfall, and the FCRA line that decides what permission a lookup needs. · 14 min
When it stops, and when it escalates
The two directions an account can go once somebody responds.
- Disputes, and what stops collectionSix things a consumer can do that change what your firm may do next — what each one stops, and for how long. · 17 min
- Suit and judgmentWhat has to be true before an account can be filed on, what the court process looks like at volume, and what a judgment is actually worth. · 16 min
- What happens in the courtroomThe morning docket with dozens of collection cases on it, the hallway where most of them resolve, what a default judgment actually requires, and how a judgment becomes money. · 16 min
The money
Where recovered money goes, and why it is the most tightly controlled thing a collections firm handles.
- The money coming backPayments arrive, sit in trust, and are remitted to the client. Every part of that is regulated, reconciled and audited. · 14 min
This is an informational reference, not legal advice, and using it creates no attorney-client relationship. Limitations periods turn on facts this page cannot know — which state's law governs, the contract type, when the claim accrued, and whether anything tolled or revived it. Confirm against the primary source and your own counsel before acting.