A lone attorney sat in the Brighton courtroom last July. The clerk magistrate — like a judge in small claims court — called a handful of cases, one after another.
Resident after resident was called to defend themselves against claims ranging from several hundred to several thousand dollars in debt. Few showed up. Nearly all cases resulted in a court-ordered judgment that they had to pay the sum.
But what stood out was that the assistant clerk magistrate seemed frustrated. The lawyer didn’t have the right documents.
At one point, the lawyer studied his phone as if trying to decipher what he saw.
“The balance due is $5,822.42,” the lawyer said.
A long silence ensued.
“May I approach?” the lawyer asked, holding up his phone to show a document.
“You don’t have this printed out?” the clerk magistrate asked.
The lawyer did not, nor could he provide details of the debt.
“Today is the trial day. You’re supposed to be prepared with all your documents,” the clerk magistrate told him.
The clerk magistrate granted a judgment for the creditor anyway. That left the resident with a court order to pay nearly $6,000 in debt.
Debt collectors are loading up the courts with cases — and collecting on debt from tens of thousands of residents every year — partly because they can easily whip through these cases by using local attorneys.
Consumer law advocates say this arrangement is flawed: The attorneys may not know all the facts of the case, or have all the paperwork, creating issues for the courts. They have limited power to negotiate, too, so that’s problematic for defendants.
These substitute attorneys take on dozens of cases a day. They’re formally known as coverage attorneys, but court critics have far less charitable nicknames, like “placeholder.”
“The debt-buying industry has been able to pay a placeholder to show up in court and get a judgment against you for something that they’re not even prepared to litigate,” said Ericka Lezcano-Board, supervising attorney of the consumer unit at Brockton-based South Coastal County Legal Services. “Justice takes time. Right now, efficiency prevails.”
In its Debt Mills series, the GBH News Center for Investigative Reporting is covering the pursuit of debt in small claims court, commonly known as “the people’s court.” These courts were designed as a simpler forum for individuals to bring claims against each other. But state data shows that, in recent years, companies have increasingly filled the court dockets, using it as a lever to collect debt from residents.
Now, for what’s believed to be the first time, a new report examines one particular gear in that debt-collection machine: coverage attorneys. A draft law review article to be published in May from Harvard Law School’s Consumer Protection Clinic director Alexa Rosenbloom found the system poses “clear ethical violations” and that courts are “extremely passive in their scrutiny of collection cases.”
It’s a system, Rosenbloom found, that tilts justice in favor of debt collectors.
“The pervasive use of coverage attorneys allows high-volume debt collection to churn through state courts, with little scrutiny and frequent inefficiencies,” the report said.
‘There’s no way to be prepared for all of those cases’
Coverage attorneys may be paid by the hour or by the case, and for some there may be a motivation to take on as many cases as possible.
Sandra Patterson, a staff attorney with South Coastal Counties Legal Services, said coverage attorneys can have as many as 70 cases in one day. She knows because she used to be one.
“A lot of the coverage attorneys, they do the best that they can, but they’re just simply not provided enough information,” she said. “There’s no way to be prepared for all of those cases.”
Because coverage attorneys often lack decision-making authority, she said, cases can be delayed, forcing consumers to miss work, struggle with child care or return to court multiple times.
Patterson now helps people sued by debt collectors and third-party debt buyers in New Bedford District Court. She said court clerks mostly defer to coverage attorneys. Patterson’s seen defendants who may have waited all morning asked to return another time so the attorney can get the necessary paperwork, or rush off to another court for other debt cases.
“Ultimately, it punishes the person being sued ... and not the big collection firms,” Patterson said.
An ‘unequal playing field’
Lawyer Maria Pretorius recently sat in a side room in Brockton District Court, trying to negotiate with a young man who had over $4,000 in credit card debt.
Conor Donovan, who said he was recovering from addiction, didn’t bring his own lawyer. While it’s rare for defendants to show up for small claims, it’s even more unusual for them to have representation.
Still, he was directed to step outside the courtroom to negotiate with the attorney representing the debt holder. Critics consider this an “unequal playing field” and some defendants think the coverage attorney works for the court.
Pretorius proposed a monthly payment plan.
“I cannot pay that amount and still be able to live without putting myself in the red every month. I want to do the right thing,” Donovan told her. “If we can go to half, I can pay back within a year.”
But Pretorius told him she wasn’t authorized to accept his offer — and she might not be able to immediately reach the creditor to confirm the deal.
And so Donovan left the courtroom disappointed — without closure, and uncertain whether his offer would be accepted or he’d have to return to court.
Pretorius and other coverage attorneys say they come prepared and do the best they can for defendants. When working with a couple juggling multiple debt cases, GBH News watched as Pretorius referred them to a pro bono legal service.
She also said she is always ready to print documents for defendants but calls paperwork an “administrative question.” Some courts ask for documentation to verify a debt amount, she said, but most of the courts she appears in don’t require it. Those documents help prove that a debt is actually owed by the defendant — since debts can be sold multiple times — and identity thieves can rack up debt under another person’s name.
“I think the clerks assumed that we would have the material to verify that in the event the defendant did show up,” Pretorius said. “If I was told ‘you have to provide this,’ then I think the attorneys that represent the collection would file those documents, but since they’re not required to, you know, they don’t.”
A ‘harvest’ of defaults
Documents are also key when a defendant fails to show.
As GBH News has seen, it’s a routine ritual in debt cases for a clerk to call case after case and — because a defendant doesn’t appear — grant a coverage attorney’s request for what is called a default judgement, a ruling in favor of the plaintiff.
The majority of defendants don’t come to court, consumer advocates say, because they never received court notices in the mail, or may not recognize the name of the company suing them, because the original debt was sold to a third-part collector.
Rosenbloom and others say the courts are too quick to grant default requests, without verifying debts.
Retired Judge Raymond Dougan, who does pro bono legal work on debt cases, calls this system a “harvest” of default judgments.
“The clerks don’t do anything regarding their responsibilities to ensure that what has been filed meets the requirements of law relative to issuing a judgment against the defendant,” he said.
Small claims is a ‘last resort’
Collection cases have flooded the state’s small claims courts, driven largely by companies pursuing delinquent credit card debt. More than 146,000 consumer debt cases were filed in 2025, a more than 60% increase from two years earlier, according todata recently released by the Massachusetts Trial Court. More than three-quarters of last year’s cases were filed by a small number of companies.
The top filers include LVNV Funding LLC, Midland Credit Management Inc. and Portfolio Recovery Associates LLC — all out-of-state companies that buy old debt for a fraction of the original value and then try to recover the full amount from the debtor.
Portfolio Recovery Associates declined to comment. LVNV did not respond to GBH News’ request.
A spokesperson for Encore Capital Group, which owns Midland Credit Management, didn’t comment on the role of coverage attorneys. But he said the company provides “all documents and information required to not only prove our claims, but to help remind the customer of the origin of the debt.”
The spokesman, Faryar Borhani, said even when a legal process has started, Midland is open to hearing about hardship a consumer may have or to work out payment arrangements “outside the court system ... up until the end of the legal process.”
“Collection litigation is a path of last resort when interacting with consumers, and we’d prefer it never come to that,” Borhani said.
Still, Rosenbloom says, companies and their law firms ultimately bear responsibility for how their stand-in lawyers operate in court.
A court under ‘capture’ by debt collectors
Consumer law experts say there are some existing court rules that apply to coverage attorneys but there’s a need for stricter enforcement by the courts. Without that enforcement, Rosenbloom says, the courts are effectively serving debt collectors and not justice.
A spokesperson for the Supreme Judicial Court, which supervises the court system, declined to comment for this story.
Some critics think cases should be dismissed when attorneys are unprepared or lack authority, and sanction firms that rely on unsupervised high-volume practices.
South Coastal County Legal Services is now trying a new tack: filing a motion for fees against the firms that hire coverage attorneys when they leave early to go to other courts or come unprepared.
Some say to level the playing field, consumers need their own advocates, but the vast majority can’t afford them. Only a fraction of the state’s courts have volunteer lawyers in debt court.
Former Judge Dougan, now a volunteer in Boston Municipal Court, said the ranks of pro bono attorneys are stretched too thin.
“There is no substitute for having a lawyer represent you,” he said, “particularly in these courts. Lawyers make an enormous difference.”
