You are here because you live in Alabama, are dealing with a company that is not treating you fairly, and you need help — you need consumer protection.

It may be a debt collector who is being abusive in collecting against you or who has sued you.

It could be a mortgage company which is illegally threatening to foreclose on your home, or maybe it already has foreclosed on your home.

Perhaps it is false information on your credit report that no one seems willing to fix for you.

Often it involves the frustrating and normally illegal robo dialed calls to your cell phone.

Whatever the reason you sought help, we are glad you are here because we passionately believe that our purpose as consumer protection lawyers is to help you do two critical things:

1. Understand your rights; and
2. Take action.

You see, the collection agencies, credit reporting agencies, mortgage companies, big banks, etc. are counting on two things:

That (1) you don’t know your rights and even if you do know your rights, (2) you won’t do a thing in the world about it.

Think of it this way – they only have to be right on one of those two assumptions to win.

If you don’t know your rights, you certainly can’t take the right action.

But even if you know your rights, if you don’t take action – what good does it do you to know your rights?

Here’s a perhaps silly metaphor but it will hopefully show why consumer protection must be full of action, not just theory and it must be action based on accurate knowledge.

You are sitting in your car.  You don’t know where to go so you just step on the accelerator and drive randomly.

You’ll “take action” but the odds of getting to the place you need to go to are very low.

Now, on the other hand, if you know exactly where to go.  You have the best GPS system around.  But you never start the car.  Does that great knowledge do you any good?  Nope — you just sit there.

So we don’t want action without knowledge or even knowledge without action.

(Derek Sivers says “If more information was the answer, then we would all be billionaires with perfect abs.”  ðŸ™‚  Good point — we do need information but it is not enough — we must add action!)

Only knowledge mixed with action is actual power.

This website is designed to help you learn more about your rights and to encourage you to take action — when you do this you truly have consumer protection. Prove to these abusive companies that their assumptions about you are wrong and you will fight back against illegal abuse. We don’t mind fighting with these companies – this is what we do.

Consumer protection is a vital subject as it can protect all of us — regardless of age, race, wealth, etc.  Anyone — rich or poor, educated or not so educated — can be victimized by abusive companies.

We have represented folks who are down to their last dollar and we have represented people living in multi million dollar homes.  We have seen folks who made mistakes and were unfairly abused by others because of those mistakes and we have had folks, for example, who have never been late in their life suddenly have dozens of debt collectors start hounding them due to identity theft.

Here’s the bottom line — unless you understand the consumer protection laws and you take action, you cannot protect yourself.

How we can help you in a convenient way (you’ll find out we don’t operate like other lawyers and you’ll thank us for this)

Think about the typical experience with a doctor, accountant, or lawyer which really hasn’t changed since the time when we all rode horses to get anywhere.

You have a question, so you call hoping to get an answer.

“You must make an in office appointment to get the answer to your question” is what you will hear.

But its a simple question!  Can’t the doctor/accountant/lawyer call me?  We have phones after all . . . .

Doesn’t matter — have to make an appointment, right?

So you make an appointment.  Arrange for childcare or taking off from work early, etc.

Then on the day of your appointment you drive to the office, find a parking spot (eventually), go in the building and sign in.  Then you wait.

And often you wait some more.

So you have spent your valuable time (and probably money) and still have nothing to show for it so far.

Then the lawyer/doctor/accountant/etc comes out and finally you (hopefully) start to get answers in plain English — not complicated jargon.

Isn’t there an easier way?  Shouldn’t there be an easier way?

This is why the “Legalzooms” of the world are so popular because lawyers have made it such a pain to deal with for real people with busy lives.

So here’s how Watts & Herring is different.

You can certainly schedule an appointment and come into one of our offices (Birmingham or Madison) and meet with us in person.  We’ve been doing in office meetings for 20 years.

But you don’t have to do this.  90% of all of our appointments are done by phone for new clients, existing clients, former clients, etc.

We schedule all phone appointments or video appointments so you don’t waste time driving, parking, walking, waiting, etc.  At our appointment time we call you.

We are ready to discuss your issues and questions.  You’ll be ready also.

We can swap documents via email, Dropbox, etc. (it is the 21st century after all!) so we don’t have to do this in person.

You will get answers to your questions.  We don’t try to impress you with big words or long convoluted answers — instead we give you direct answers to your questions.  You may not always like what we have to say but we will shoot straight with you so you will have a good understanding of your options.  (Check out our videos and articles — if you like these, you’ll like talking to us — if not, you should call someone else).

Other attorneys think this is crazy — we should make you jump through hoops to “impress you” or intimidate you — we think that is a bunch of garbage.  This is not a matter of impressing other attorneys  — it is a matter of helping you.  If we help you, then you are likely to hire us.  If we don’t, then you need to talk with someone else.

So when you are ready, let us help you by answering your questions and giving you our thoughts on your options — and we’ll do this in the most convenient way for you.  Without you having to drive a buggy to town to sit and wait in our conference room.  ðŸ™‚

Let us help you today.

John G. Watts and Stan Herring