You took an advance. Then another, to cover the first. Now the ACH hits before the deposits do. An attorney reads the agreements you actually signed, tells you plainly where you stand, and where the facts allow it, negotiates with the funders for terms your cash flow can carry. Where that is not enough, the same attorney handles the bankruptcy.
A review is a starting conversation, not a commitment.
Before anything is negotiated, an attorney reads every advance agreement in front of you and explains what it does.
An attorney will review your documentation, speak with you, and provide a legal solution specific to what your business needs.
Our firm moves immediately to lower payments and free up cash flow, and files court papers designed to stop creditors from harassing you and your clients. We do what is necessary so that you can focus on your business.
The practice covers merchant cash advance restructuring and bankruptcy. Most owners who call are hoping to avoid the second, and often that is achievable. What matters is being told honestly which route your numbers actually support — by someone who does both, and therefore has no reason to steer you toward either.
An attorney reads every advance agreement you have signed and gives you a written, plain-English opinion: what the lien actually covers, how the daily or weekly draw is calculated, whether you signed a confession of judgment or a personal guaranty, and which terms are enforceable as written. Most owners have never been given this reading of their own paperwork.
Armed with that opinion, the firm contacts the funders on your behalf and negotiates. Some funders will restructure rather than push a business into default and collect nothing. Some will not. We tell you which is which as we learn it, and we do not pretend leverage exists where it does not.
Where a funder agrees, the outcome is a written, executed modification: a lower or less frequent payment, a longer schedule, a pause, or a negotiated resolution of the balance. You see the document, an attorney explains it, and you decide. Nothing is signed on your behalf.
Where restructuring is not enough, the firm handles the bankruptcy itself rather than referring you elsewhere. Fifteen years of bankruptcy and default litigation, and a clerkship inside a bankruptcy court, sit behind that advice — including the advice not to file, when filing would cost you more than it saves.
Talk it through first →By the time most owners call, three parties have already handled their file, and not one of them was working for them. The broker was paid at closing. The funder holds a security interest in the receivables. And the debt relief company now calling twice a day is not a law firm at all, cannot appear for you anywhere, and is often paid the same whether your situation improves or not.
An attorney is different in kind, not degree. The duty runs to you. The advice is privileged. And when an agreement contains a confession of judgment, a personal guaranty, or a reconciliation clause the funder has quietly stopped honoring, a lawyer is the person qualified to tell you exactly what that means for your account and your personal exposure.
It also means you get told no. If a restructuring will not help your business, the firm will say so and explain what would.
Restructuring is negotiation, and negotiation runs on the other side's clock as much as ours. Here is what actually happens, and roughly how long each part takes.
Fifteen or twenty minutes. You describe what you took, from whom, and what is being pulled out of the account each day. We tell you whether this is the kind of situation the firm can help with. If it is not, we say so on that call.
You send the advance agreements for every open position, plus the last three to six months of business bank statements. Complete paperwork is the single biggest factor in how fast the rest of this moves. Missing agreements are the usual reason a file stalls here.
An attorney reads the file and writes up your position: the lien, the draw, the guaranty, the confession of judgment if there is one, the reconciliation clause, and a candid read on which balances have room to move. You get it in writing and we walk through it together.
The firm contacts each funder and negotiates. This is the step nobody can put a clean number on. A responsive funder can agree in a week or two. A slow one takes a month or more. Some refuse outright, and when that happens you will be told, along with what options remain.
Where a funder agrees, you receive the written modification, an attorney explains what changed, and you sign only if it works for the business. Where no funder agrees, you still leave with a clear legal picture of your position and a frank conversation about what comes next.
Anyone who tells you this takes exactly thirty days, or that a specific percentage will come off the balance, is guessing at best. Timelines here depend on your funders, your paperwork, and your numbers.
Every advance agreement is read by an attorney and explained in plain English — the lien, the draw, the guaranty, the confession of judgment if there is one.
Once you are a client, what you tell the firm is protected. A debt relief company cannot offer you that, because it is not a law firm.
Funders negotiate differently with counsel who has litigated these agreements and knows what a default actually costs them.
If restructuring will not help your business, you will hear that plainly, along with what would. Nobody here is paid to keep you hopeful.
This firm exists because of a pattern that repeats almost word for word. A business needs cash quickly. A broker moves fast and is paid at closing. The owner signs a stack of documents nobody walks them through. Months later the daily withdrawals have outrun the deposits, a second advance was taken to service the first, and the operating account is being emptied by a contract the owner has still never had explained to them.
April Stone is a litigator. She has spent fifteen years in default and bankruptcy matters, is a graduate of the University of Florida Levin College of Law, and clerked for Chief Bankruptcy Judge Paul Glenn before joining the bankruptcy and restructuring litigation group at Akerman.
That background is the reason this works at the negotiating table. A funder's willingness to restructure depends entirely on what happens if it refuses. Someone who has litigated these agreements — and who can file the bankruptcy if it comes to that — knows which provisions hold up, what a default actually costs both sides, and when a funder is bluffing.
No. This firm does not lend money, arrange advances, or broker any financing. There is no new money involved at any point. This is a legal service: an attorney reviews the advance agreements you already have and negotiates with the funders who already hold them. If what you actually need is capital, we are not the right call, and we will tell you that.
The initial consultation is free and carries no obligation. If you decide to move forward, fees depend on how many positions you hold and what the file requires, and they are set out in a written engagement agreement that you sign before any billable work begins. You will never be billed for something you did not agree to in writing.
Merchant cash advances usually sit outside consumer credit reporting, so the advances themselves typically are not what shows up on a personal credit report. But the surrounding facts can matter: many advances are backed by a personal guaranty, a default can lead to a judgment, and a judgment is a public record with real consequences. If you have signed a guaranty, that is one of the first things the review identifies, precisely so it can be discussed rather than discovered later.
Our firm will reach out immediately with a cease and desist letter. In the most extreme cases, we will file court papers seeking a temporary restraining order to bar funders from harassing you or contacting your clients.
This is the greatest benefit of hiring an attorney. We can initiate litigation against predatory funders and seek to hold them accountable in court — something a debt consolidation practice has no ability to do, because it cannot appear on your behalf anywhere.
Then you are in the situation this firm sees most often, and it is worth calling sooner rather than later. Default changes the position but does not end the conversation. Funders still recover more from a business that keeps operating than from one that closes, and that remains true after a default. What default does change is the urgency, the leverage, and sometimes the strategy, all of which the review addresses directly.
Often it is not, and a significant part of this practice is keeping businesses out of bankruptcy where that can be done. Restructuring the advances directly is usually the less destructive path, and it is the one worth exhausting first.
But the firm handles bankruptcy too, and that matters for a reason worth stating plainly: a firm that only restructures has a reason to tell you that restructuring is the answer. Here, both routes are in-house. If filing genuinely is the better tool for your situation, you will be told so and the firm can handle it — and if it is not, you will be told that instead.
The part the firm controls is quick: the legal review is typically finished within three to five business days of receiving complete documents. Negotiation is the part that is not ours to schedule. A responsive funder may agree within a week or two; a slow one can take a month or more; some do not agree at all. Anyone quoting you a fixed timeline for a negotiation they have not started is guessing.
No. Sending information through this site, including the intake form, does not create an attorney-client relationship and does not make what you send privileged. That relationship begins only when the firm and you both sign a written engagement agreement. Until then, treat this as what it is: a starting conversation.
The firm does not instruct businesses to stop paying as a negotiating tactic. Whether to keep paying, and at what level, is a decision that depends on your agreements, your cash position, and your exposure under any guaranty, and it is exactly the kind of question the legal review is meant to answer with facts rather than a script.
Send the agreements, or just call and describe the situation. Either way, the first conversation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
