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At one point or another in your life, it isn’t hard to make a mistake with a credit card. Those can only be repaired over time. However, there are times when your credit score might be inaccurate, or you might need legal help working on your credit score. Sometimes you can repair your credit score yourself, but often times it will need work.
WHAT IS A CREDIT LAWYER?
A credit lawyer is an attorney that is specifically trained to help you with your credit score. Their main job is to go through your credit score and find any place that you might have an error. They then take the necessary steps to repair this error for you.
The job of a credit attorney is more detailed than to simply repair errors. They first work with you to identify any errors that you may have with your credit score. From there they contact the credit reporting agencies to remove errors.
A skilled credit lawyer can also help you to negotiate other negative items off your credit score. Foreclosures, late payments, credit checks, can often be removed if you have an attorney who is good at negotiating.
Their job also involves negotiating with creditors for settlement amounts and representing you if any of your credit goes to court.
DO YOU HAVE TO BE A CREDIT LAWYER TO DO THIS?
In most cases you do not have to be a credit lawyer in order to work with creditors and credit reporting agencies on your own credit score. However, unless someone is your dependent, you can only work on your own. But just because you can, doesn’t mean it is easy.
At one point you use to be able to call up a credit reporting agency and speak with a person who could help you. Now there are forms that need to be filled out and most of the people who will answer the phone at these agencies are not authorized to approve negotiations.
Credit lawyers spend their whole career building up contacts in the industry and learning the ins and outs of their jobs. This makes what is a complicated process for us, an easier process for them.
HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO WORK WITH A CREDIT LAWYER?
The exact cost of working with a credit lawyer varies depending on what they have to do for you. The more work that they have to do, the more it will cost. Additionally, there is often a base fee that they will charge.
Most quality credit lawyers will provide you with a free consultation. Speak with the attorney and give them an idea of what they are facing. That will help them to give you an accurate quote.
Make note that some credit lawyers charge per hour while others charge a flat rate of the recovered money. For cases where you are going to be charged hourly, make sure that you have a quote beforehand so that you don’t end up with an incredibly large bill out of surprise.
ARE THERE SCAMS OUT THERE?
Like with any other industry out there, scams do exist. It is important that you take the time to do a little bit of research about any business that you will be working with. When working with credit repair lawyers, it is even more important. You will be required to provide a lot of information that could make identity theft quite easy.
Besides researching the company be aware if they ask for anything shady, such as payment before they have done anything for you.
Credit lawyers can help to get you out of a bad credit score. They do a lot of work for those that they work with. However, it all depends on how much debt you are in and what your credit history says. However, it never hurts to have a free, no-obligation consultation with a credit lawyer to see if they can help you. While a fee of $1,000 to $5,000 sounds like a lot, it can be nothing compared to some people’s debt.
Baloydi Lloydi is the content manager of Asknoypi.