What a floor is worth against a contingency fee
Collections contingency runs 35 to 50 percent of what is collected, and commonly a third in New York. Half of nothing is nothing. This page does the arithmetic that sits in front of that fee. One judgment, one recorded stack, walked both ways.
One session, published twice. The written version below follows the recording as it plays. Click any line to jump the film to it.
0:34The fee is a share of a recovery
So let's start with what the fee is a share of.
It's a share of a recovery.
And that one word is the whole thing. The judgment amount is a ceiling. The working number in a file is whatever the record can be shown to support, which is almost always a smaller number, and sometimes it's zero.
Now, there's a cost on the other side of that. A private investigator asset report runs 250 to $400 in the ordinary case, and bank searches are priced separately on top. And a Florida collections firm puts the problem plainly on its own website. Pursuing a judgment isn't always cost effective. The creditor has to settle collectability first.
Settle collectability first. That's the decision sitting in front of every file you open, and everything I'm about to show you is made out of documents that were already recorded. Every line of it has a document behind it.
1:32One judgment, one stack
So let me give you one judgment and one stack.
Everything from here is an illustration. No real matter, no real parcel. I've made the numbers round so you can check the sum as I go.
Your judgment is $240,000, docketed 2026 in Kings County. The debtor owns one parcel, and the roll carries it at 1.1 million.
Recorded against that parcel, in order. 2014, a mortgage, 760,000. 2021, a second mortgage, 310,000. 2025, a state tax warrant, 58,000. And then 2026, your judgment, 240,000.
Recording date sets priority. That one fact is what this entire sum turns on. Everything recorded ahead of you gets paid before you do.
2:20Where the floor says pursue
So here's the first version. This is the one where the floor says pursue.
In this version, the 2021 mortgage refinanced the 2014 one, and the satisfaction is on file with its own document number. Which means the 2014 mortgage is retired, and you can take it off the stack.
So add up what's actually live and senior to you. 310,000, plus 58,000. 368,000. Against a market value on the roll of 1.1 million. Which puts the floor on reachable value at $732,000.
Your judgment is 240. You're covered three times over.
Now put the fee against that. At a third, collecting in full is 80,000 to the firm and 160,000 to the client. At 50% it's 120,000 each way. And either one of those tells you what you're spending attorney hours against, which turns your cost ceiling into a figure instead of an instinct. What you do with the figure is yours, and your counsel's. We don't touch it.
3:27Where the floor says stop
Okay. Now the second version. Same file, and this is the one nobody writes.
Same parcel. Same judgment. Same roll value, same four documents. One fact changes.
There's no satisfaction on file for the 2014 mortgage.
So now the live senior claims are 760,000, plus 310, plus 58. That's 1.128 million. Against a roll value of 1.1 million. The floor on reachable value is zero, with recorded senior claims exceeding the roll value by $28,000.
And I want to sit on this one for a second, because this is the half that carries the money.
You didn't book the examination. On an hourly file, that cost stays with the client. On a one third contingency it lands on the firm, which fronted the work and takes a share of zero. So put your own rate in. 6 hours of attorney time at $400 is 2,400, before service and before the appearance. And before the call where you tell a client there was nothing there.
4:41What a floor of zero does not say
But be careful about what a floor of zero actually means.
Because it does not say the debtor has nothing.
We count debt at its recorded face. Never at its current balance. So a 2014 mortgage with 12 years of payments behind it still stands on the report at 760,000, and it's almost certainly owed at less than that.
The figure errs low, and it errs low deliberately. Here's the reasoning. A creditor who acts on an optimistic estimate loses money. A creditor who acts on a floor does not. So every report prints the direction of that error. What we can't do yet is quantify the magnitude, and the validation against title searches is still running.
The record has holes too, and we publish all of them. New York County Clerk money judgments aren't loaded, so a debtor showing no private judgment may still have been sued. Older satisfactions don't always link, and any parcel whose verdict turns on one gets marked on its face. And outside four New York City boroughs we compute nothing at all.
So that second case reads a record. It doesn't judge a person. What it hands you is an account of what was searched, and of what that search would have caught, if anything had been there to catch.
6:08Florida, where this sum does not run
Now, Florida. Which is where this sum doesn't run.
Two of the most common questions in this market are Florida questions, and the honest answer to both starts with what Florida takes out of reach. The Florida Constitution exempts homestead from forced sale, and that exemption isn't general. Four exceptions run through it, and they're listed on the page with their section numbers.
But here's the part that bears on the sum. We compute no reachable figure anywhere in Florida. None at all. Because Florida claims tie to a name rather than to a lot. So our Florida side screens homestead against the acreage, residency and ownership tests, and it prints the authority beside each verdict. We print the test. Your counsel answers it.
6:57The cost on your side of the sum
Which leaves one number, and it's on your side of the sum.
The first report is free, and there's nothing to book. After that it's $75 a debtor, or a flat monthly rate for everything the firm runs, which is on the page. Read the 75 against the 250 to 400 an investigator charges for an asset report, with bank searches priced on top.
And I'm not going to tell you how this sum comes out on your matters, because that turns on your fee split and on the debtors in front of you. So run three you've already closed, and grade the answers against what you already know happened. Send me the first three.
If the floor is wrong on your own matters, you'll see it in an afternoon. And I would rather you found that out on a file where you already know how it ended.