Small Claims Advantage

Welcome to SmallClaimsAdvantage.com, the on-line law firm dedicated specifically and exclusively to California small claims cases.

The work we do here is conducted by licensed California attorneys or by professional legal assistants under their direction.

You won’t find any “no legal advice” disclaimers here — legal advice is exactly what we offer. You tell us some basic background and the facts of your case, and we’ll give you a plain-English discussion of the law which is likely to apply to your dispute for you to use as you see fit — including adopting it as your own, professionally researched and written legal brief to submit to your small claims judge. Your judge, after all, will do one of two things to decide how your case comes out: either conduct his or her own legal research; or rely on the legal briefs submitted by one or both parties.

With our service, you come out ahead either way — you will be familiar before your hearing begins with the legal principles likely to apply specifically to the facts of your case, and you will be able to submit to your judge a legal brief discussing those legal principles from your point of view.

Here’s How It Works:

1. You acknowledge reading and understanding the terms and conditions of our provision of services and submit your credit card information to pay our fee.
2. You complete the on-line form telling us background information about your case and giving us the facts.
3. We review your factual submission, perhaps ask you via e-mail for some additional details, and then conduct the necessary legal research. We then prepare and send back to you, via either Adobe Acrobat file attachment or incorporation into an e-mail, a professionally researched legal brief discussing the facts, the law, and the appropriate outcome of the case, based on the specific facts you tell us about your case and written from your point of view.
4. You use our brief in whatever way is most comfortable for you — to familiarize yourself with legal principles you need to know to argue your case effectively; as a springboard for additional investigation or case preparation; for “leverage” in settlement negotiations; and/or as a professionally researched and written legal brief you can submit directly to your small claims judge.

Here’s What It Costs:

We offer the service described above for a flat per-case fee of $250. The jurisdiction of the small claims court includes cases in which the claim is $7,500 or less. Therefore, for an investment of as little as 3.33% of the potential value of your case, you can secure the advantage of professional legal research of the law and preparation of a legal brief to argue your side. Compare that to the fees a typical attorney would be expected to charge for the same services!

Here’s What We Don’t Do:

• We don’t provide “nuts and bolts” advice about the procedural aspects involved in a small claims proceeding — there is plenty of information about that available for free or at a nominal cost.
• We don’t claim to provide advice about whether small claims court is the right place for your claim to be (remember if your claim is potentially worth more than $7,500 and you proceed in small claims court you can in no event recover the amount of your claim which exceeds $7,500) – we offer our services only to those who are already involved in a proceeding which is in small claims court and/or who have already decided that, for reasons of their own, that’s where they want to be.
• We don’t provide long-winded and complex briefs full of legal mumbo-jumbo — we provide succinct and streamlined briefs professionally written in plain English, understandable by both the parties to the dispute and the small claims judge.
• We don’t make you wait a long time for a response — our turn-around time, from the time we get the necessary submission of facts, will be no greater than five business days.
• We don’t accept matters we should stay way from — if for any reason we are unable to provide competent and timely service, we will respectfully decline your matter and advise you immediately.
• And, we don’t send you a bill after your case is over with a lot of unexpected charges — we provide our service for a one-time flat fee, paid before we undertake work on your case.

Here’s What We Can’t Do:

• We can’t provide services to anyone except people involved in small claims court in California –because work is done on your case by licensed California attorneys, and we can’t give legal advice where we’re not licensed.
• We can’t act as counsel of record or represent you during the trial of your small claims case — by law, there are no lawyers allowed in those respects.
• We can’t provide advice based on anything other than the facts you tell us about — we can’t make up facts or read your mind!
• We can’t provide advice for anything other than the one, specific small claims case you submit to us — each case has different facts and the legal analysis which applies to one may very well not apply to another, even if they appear to be similar.
• We can’t give advice to both sides of the same case, because we must avoid conflicts of interest — so if you use our services, you will know we won’t be helping your opponent. On the other hand, if your opponent hires us first, then we can’t help you!
• We can’t guarantee you will win your case or that the outcome will not be worse than what you hope for — we can provide a professionally researched and written legal brief based on what you tell us, but we don’t have a crystal ball.

Continue to review the terms and conditions of our provision of services.

Questions? Contact us.