Hello, my name is Ian Chowdhury.

How I practice

I take on only a few new cases a week. I am very hands-on with each one. I do not assign substantive legal work to non-attorney office staff, and I do not put telemarketers in charge of client communications — which, by the way, is exactly what happens at the slick, heavily advertised firms you have probably already come across. When you need to talk with your attorney, you are talking directly with me.

Background

I earned my J.D. from Santa Clara University School of Law in 1998. After graduation I clerked for the Honorable Jeremy Fogel in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, and then spent four years as an intellectual-property litigator at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. I opened my own practice in 2005.

Over the years I have argued enough debt-buyer cases to develop a specific expertise in how these companies fail to prove their claims — particularly the Code of Civil Procedure §98 declarations and business-records foundations they rely on to push cheap judgments through the system. Several of those arguments resulted in published decisions:

• Sierra Managed Asset Plan v. Hale — Appellate Division, declarant availability under CCP §98.
• CACH v. Rodgers — business-records foundation failure.
• Midland Funding v. Romero — Orange County Appellate Division, both CCP §98 and hearsay grounds.
• Rouse v. Law Offices of Rory Clark, LLP — Ninth Circuit, holding that FDCPA defendants cannot recover costs against a consumer plaintiff absent a finding of bad faith.

Beyond those published decisions, I was part of the small team of attorneys who won a multi-million-dollar settlement against Midland Funding (aka Midland Credit Management) helping many Californians as part of that. The case was filed in Alameda County Superior Court in 2010. It took more than a decade to resolve, but it was worth the effort because we taught a big lesson to a big debt buyer.

DocketWrangler

Outside of this practice I also work on DocketWrangler, a legal technology project aimed at using software to serve markets the profession has historically not served well. It is a separate venture, but the same person is behind it.

What to do next

If you are defending a current collection lawsuit in California, these are useful places to start:

• Schedule a free fifteen-minute virtual consultation with me to find out whether I can represent you.
• Watch the videos on the home page, which explain my fees and give an overview of a typical debt collection case.
• Read testimonials from past clients.
• Investigate my past cases so you can judge the work directly.

If you are defending against a current collection lawsuit in California, I look forward to talking with you.