How to respond to any demand letter

12.1Read the deadline and write it down

Find the date. Put it where you will see it. Put a second date a week earlier for your own decision. If the letter gives no date, work to two weeks from receipt and ask the sender in writing to confirm one. The deadline on a demand letter is the sender's, not a court's, but it is the point at which the cheapest resolution usually stops being available.

12.2Verify the sender

1. The corporate registry. Search the exact entity name on the letterhead in the business-entity database of the state in its address. Florida's is at search.sunbiz.org; other states call theirs a business search on the Secretary of State's site. Note whether it is active, its registered agent and its principal address.
2. The domain. Type it into a browser yourself rather than clicking a link. Check that the site describes what the sender does and matches the letter.
3. Court records. PACER, the federal courts' public record system, lets you search by party name for a small per-page charge. Search the sender and any law firm named. Note that many claims are filed in the name of the person with the claim, not the company that wrote the letter.
4. The bar directory. If a lawyer signed, every state bar has a public lawyer search. Check the name, status and firm.

A sender that exists is not the same as a claim that is good. A sender that cannot be found anywhere, writes from a webmail address and wants payment by gift card or cryptocurrency is not a claim at all.

12.3Preserve the records

A demand letter means litigation is reasonably anticipated, and from that point records connected to the claim must not be deleted, altered or tidied. Tell the people who hold them, in writing, what the hold covers. Suspend scheduled purges for the relevant data. That includes records that hurt your position; destroying them after notice can be far worse in a later case than what they show. Make a copy of the letter and the envelope.

12.4Do not call the sender first

The owner who picks up the phone the day the letter arrives spends twenty minutes making statements about the facts before checking them, with no record except the sender's. Some of the statements will be wrong. Write instead. Do not contact the person with the underlying claim directly if they have engaged someone to deal with you. Do not contact a vendor or employee involved in anger; the first message to them is a written request for records.

12.5Pull your own facts

For each allegation in the letter, find the document that confirms or contradicts it: the call log, the licence, the contract, the time record, the invoice, the page as it was. Put them in a folder with a one-page timeline. This is the file every later conversation runs on. A lawyer can advise in an hour with it and not at all without it. It is also where the real defences appear, because they live in documents, not in memory.

12.6Stop what costs nothing to stop

Remove the image. Suppress the phone numbers. Pause the campaign. Stop using the disputed name on new material while the matter is open. Done without admission, these steps cost nothing in the argument and remove the most expensive category of exposure, which is continued conduct after notice. Where stopping would be costly, hold off and take advice.

12.7What a written response contains

1. The reference from the letter, and the date you received it.
2. What you have done, without admission: material removed on a date, numbers suppressed, records preserved.
3. What you dispute, and why, item by item, with the document that shows it attached. A licence, a consent record, a contract clause, a time record, a dated first use.
4. What you accept or propose, for the items that stand: a figure, a schedule, a timetable for remediation, or acceptance of the demand, and a request for the release or agreement terms. The figure comes from the method in settle or fight: how to decide.
5. If you need time: the reason and the date you will respond by.
6. How to reach you, and a statement that further correspondence should be in writing.

Keep it factual and short. Leave out opinions about the sender, the law, or the fairness of the claim. Send it by the method the letter specifies, keep a copy, and keep proof of delivery.

12.8After the reply

Expect one of three things: acceptance, a counter, or referral to a lawyer. If a resolution is reached, get the release or agreement in writing before paying, check that it covers everything in the letter, and pay by a method that leaves a record. If the sender comes back with a reduced claim, go through the same process again. If the matter is referred and a complaint follows, chapter 2 applies and the deadline is now a court's.