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The law suit is started by a summons and complaint.  The original gets filed with the court, which assigns an index number.  A copy of the summons and complaint, with the index number, then has to be formally delivered to the defendant.  If the defendant is a corporation or other entity, the delivery is made at the Albany office of the New York State Secretary of State.  For an individual, the delivery has to be made at the home or office.  Proof of the delivery of the summons and complaint gets immediately filed with the court. The defendant then has to answer the complaint, usually, within 30 days after the proof of delivery gets filed with the court.  If the defendant does not answer within this time, a default judgment gets submitted.  The judgment has to be processed by the court clerk.  Sometimes, the court clerk will insist on requiring an order of the judge.  Currently, most court clerks have backlogs of judgments to process, in some cases over half a year.  One of the jobs of a contingent fee lawyer is to continually choose the available court with the least backlog.  If the defendant is an individual, there must be submitted proof that the defendant is not in the military.

After the court clerk signs the judgment, assets and bank accounts can be seized.

If instead of defaulting, the defendant timely answers the complaint, the next step is to get the judgment through an order of the court.  This is accomplished by either summary judgment or at trial.  Summary judgment is the equivalent of a trial upon the papers submitted, including the client’s affidavit.  In most cases to recover unpaid invoices, a competent contingent fee lawyer can submit a compelling summary judgment motion.  We do this through the affidavit that a client gets when the case is first started. 

Sometimes, there has to be extracted information or documents from the defendant in order to get admissions needed for a judgment.  This is called the discovery or pre-trial process.  In some courts, the process gets initiated by a pre-trial preliminary conference. A lot of legal battles are fought in this process because it is the stage where high-priced defense lawyers try to delay a case from getting to trial.

After a judgment, we restrain the major banks to try to locate an account.  The Marshal or Sheriff can seize any property found at business premises of a corporate defendant.  Depending upon the business or information known about the defendant, other sources of funds are restrained or garnished.

Of course, it goes without saying, that throughout every stage, the defendant is coaxed and pressured as hard as possible to settle up for the monies owed.