John Watts

John G. Watts is a consumer litigation attorney in Birmingham, Alabama. He will teach a course on consumer litigation – “Consumer Alchemy – How To Turn Consumer Abuse Into Happy Clients: Using the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), and Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) to help consumers.”

You have clients right now in your solo practice that are being abused by debt collectors or they have false information on their credit reports. It is almost a certainty that you have clients that are receiving illegal “computer dialed” or “pre-recorded” calls to their cell phones. They can be entitled to up to $1500 in statutory damages per call. You may have five or six figure consumer cases in your office right now. But unless we know what to look for, we won’t be able to help these clients and their friends, family, and neighbors. And we won’t be able to make the money that we deserve to make by providing high quality services to our clients.

In this course, you will be guided through the process of meeting with clients, evaluating the potential causes of action, drafting the lawsuits, succeeding with motion practice, obtaining the discovery you are entitled to, and marketing your practice. The end result is that you will have the ability to set up your practice (or a part of your practice) to profitably handle consumer litigation cases so that you can “do well while doing good” and have happy clients that tell others about you.

John graduated from the Cumberland School of Law (Samford University) in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1995. He has focused on civil litigation since 1995 and opened his solo practice (Watts Law Group, PC) in 2006. He frequently presents CLEs to lawyers (nationally and locally) on the topics of the FDCPA, TCPA, FCRA, defending consumers who are sued by debt collectors, and using technology in marketing your legal practice.

John has represented consumers in both individual actions as well as in class actions under state and federal law. He has argued appellate court cases to the Alabama Supreme Court, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and has tried numerous jury and non jury trials.

Syllabus: Consumer Alchemy – How To Turn Consumer Abuse Into Happy Clients

The “Consumer Alchemy” course is organized as follows:

CLASS ONE

• Are there enough cases for me to make a living at this?
• This is a legitimate question as often lawyers do not see the value in handling consumer litigation cases.
• We will discuss some of the numbers involved in consumer litigation cases. These numbers include the potential awards to clients, fee awards, statutory damage awards, numbers of potential clients, and other similar items. We will also examine how your existing clients may even now have legitimate consumer litigation cases to file.
• Finally, we will take a look at why the consumer protection laws are needed and what that means for us as consumer litigators.
• At the end of the class you will see that this is a viable area to practice law in as a solo.

CLASS TWO

• What do you need to do before you meet with your first consumer litigation client?
• What resources do you need to have on hand? What court decisions and statutes should you have? What type of software do you need – case management, calendaring, time tracking, etc? What forms do you need?
• At the end of this class you will have a roadmap for what you need to obtain before you start meeting with clients.

CLASS THREE

• Marketing 101 – how do we get the first consumer litigation clients in the door?
• Even before we start reviewing the laws that we will focus on, how do we get clients to call us? How do we get them in our conference room? It’s a bit of a cliché but we can be the best consumer lawyers but if we don’t have clients we aren’t doing consumers any good and we won’t have the financial rewards that we should have for doing this type of work.
• In this class we will cover several ways to market to consumers who need us. Websites. Blogs. Articles. Videos. Client newsletters (print and email). Creating reports or books or teleseminars. Obtaining referrals from lawyers and non lawyers.
• At the end of this class you will have a good overview of and action plan for beginning your marketing efforts to find those clients that need your help.

CLASS FOUR

• What do I do in my first client meeting?
• What forms do I use? What questions should I ask?
• In this class we will discuss all aspects of the initial client meeting:
  • Intake
  • Analysis
  • Checklists and forms
  • Recommendations to the client
  • Homework to the client
  • Signing up the case or turning down the case
• After this class, you will have a good feel for what you will need to do when you meet with your first consumer litigation client. Those of you who are experienced lawyers will find these tips useful in fitting in with your own unique style and those of you who are not as experienced will have a framework that you can use and modify to fit your personality.

CLASS FIVE
Overview of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA).

CLASS SIX
Fair Debt Collection Practices Act – specific examples of common violations of the law.

CLASS SEVEN
Overview of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA)

CLASS EIGHT
Overview of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).

CLASS NINE
Overview of drafting the lawsuit.

CLASS TEN
What do I do when I face a motion to dismiss or a motion for summary judgment?

CLASS ELEVEN
Overview of federal court discovery and how to set up and use motions to compel to get the information you need.

CLASS TWELVE
Revisiting the client meeting to make sure we turn stressed out consumers into raving fans.

CLASS THIRTEEN
Marketing 102 – applying our knowledge of the federal laws to our marketing materials to reach even more consumers who need our help

CLASS FOURTEEN
Final class – what shall we discuss?