As an insurance agency the specializes in Lawyers Professional Liability Insurance it is interesting to see some of the claims that come in, where the attorney should have known better and/or supervised their staff better. Most Collection Attorneys that specialize in collection work run a very tight ship and wonder why the cost of obtaining attorney malpractice insurance is so high. While there are the law firms that troll collection practices firms looking for a violation of procedures to bring a claim against the collection firm. There are a few collection practices firms that seem to ignore the law.
The Fair Debt Collections Practices Act (FDCPA) bans a variety of conduct, yet in some of the claims reported by collection firms these are the very complaints reported. Banned conduct under the FDCPA includes the use of violence, the use of obscene or profane language, and repeated phone calls intended to annoy or harass any person at the called number, other less obviously abusive conduct can be interpreted as abusive and thus violations of the FDCPA.
The most frequent violation consists of threatening to take or taking an action that cannot be legally taken or is not intended to be taken.
Even though the FDCPA has been around since 1977, we continue to see malpractice claims citing these very violations. Given the frequency of FDCPA claims, collection attorney will continue to see higher attorney malpractice rates.