Judgment recovery companies: best judgment collection agencies for a business judgment, compared on published fees

Nobody on this list will take a business judgment for less than about 30 percent of what they recover, and the one that pays you cash up front pays 1 to 25 percent of face value. That is the honest starting point for choosing a judgment recovery company, because post judgment work is priced on the odds that the money exists, not on the hours anyone spends. Below are five US firms with what each one actually publishes, read at source on 2 September 2026, plus the two screening questions that decide whether you should place a judgment at all.

Most of this market publishes nothing. Two of the five below state a rate on their own site, one publishes a full size based card, and the rest ask you to call. Every figure here came off the firm's own pages today, not from a roundup, and where a firm publishes no price the table says so rather than guessing.

Judgment recovery companies compared on published fees

What does a judgment collection agency charge?

Between 25 and 50 percent of what it recovers, with 30 percent about the floor for post judgment work and the rate rising as the balance falls. The Kaplan Group's published card is the clearest public example: 50 percent under $1,000 falling to 10 percent above $500,000. A judgment buyer is different, paying 1 to 25 percent of face value in cash and keeping everything it collects.

The reason the percentage moves with size rather than difficulty is arithmetic. Serving a levy, filing a lien and appearing at a debtor's examination cost roughly the same whether the judgment is for $3,000 or $300,000. On the small file the fixed cost has to come out of a bigger share. This is also why a quote at the top of the band is a signal, not an insult: the firm has looked at your debtor and priced the risk that there is nothing behind the paper.

Is it worth paying someone to collect a judgment?

It depends entirely on whether you can name an asset. If you already know the debtor's bank, a do it yourself levy is dramatically cheaper: in California a writ of execution costs $40 to issue and the sheriff charges $50 for each person or organization served, so one attempt runs about $90 in hard fees against a 30 to 50 percent contingency cut.

If you cannot name an asset, you are buying an asset search, and that is what the contingency is actually for. The uncomfortable number behind this whole market is the roughly 80 percent of US civil money judgments that go unenforced, a figure Joe Dickerson reported in the ABA Journal in 2020. He did not cite a study for it and no federal agency publishes the measure, so treat it as an experienced practitioner's estimate. What corroborates it is the resale price. Buyers with real money at stake pay 1 to 25 percent of face value, and reserve the top of that range for debtors who are visibly solvent.

Dickerson's explanation is worth reading before you hire anyone, because it argues the failures are procedural rather than inevitable: only three of the top 50 US law schools taught judgment enforcement at all, files routinely showed nobody following up on subpoenaed documents, and depositions were taken so early that the debtor learned exactly which assets to move. Those are the things to ask a prospective firm how it handles. If you want to check how your own state's enforcement statute reads before that call, it is now quick to look the case law up in plain English instead of paying for an hour of someone else's time to summarize it.

Can I sell my judgment instead of collecting it?

Yes, and for many creditors it is the rational move. A sale assigns the judgment outright: you take a cash price now, the buyer keeps whatever it collects, and you stop funding the effort. Placement is the opposite, where you stay the creditor and the firm takes a percentage of what comes back.

The published range is 1 to 25 percent of face value. Buyers concentrate on civil money judgments, generally recent, and will not touch consumer debt or family law orders. Final Verdict Solutions states a $25,000 threshold on its own site for what it will consider, while describing the broader 2026 market as interested from about $5,000 upward with far more appetite above $50,000.

One rule that separates a real buyer from a scam: a reputable buyer never asks the seller for an application fee, a processing cost or an advance payment. Any request for money up front is the clearest red flag in this market. And take the offer as free information even if you refuse it. A firm bidding 3 percent has just told you, with its own capital on the line, what your enforcement effort is likely to be worth.

How do I choose between a recovery firm and a collections attorney?

Ask two questions. First: who fronts the court costs? A firm that fronts writ fees, sheriff fees and filing fees is absorbing the cost of failed attempts, which is the real risk in judgment collection. Second: what is the firm's honest read on collectability before it takes the file? A firm that screens, as Kaplan does at a stated 50 percent threshold, is telling you it will not run up costs on a hopeless case.

Beyond that, the practical divide is what the firm can do without a lawyer. Judgment Recovery Pros states outright that it is not a law firm, which is normal in this industry and fine for levies, liens, skip tracing and debtor examinations. You need counsel when the work becomes contested litigation: fraudulent transfer claims, piercing the entity, defending a claim of exemption, or taking further legal action for non payment of invoices. If your judgment was entered in one state and the assets sit in another, ask specifically about domestication, since that filing has to happen before any local enforcement is possible.

What should I do before the account ever becomes a judgment?

Almost every figure above is a discount applied to time. Commercial accounts chased inside 90 days recover at roughly 70 percent; past 180 days recovery is often below 15 percent; and by the time an invoice has been through a demand letter, a lawsuit and entry of judgment, it has usually been open for more than a year. The 1 to 25 percent a buyer offers is that decay priced in cash.

So the highest return work in this whole area is not on the judgment. It is on the accounts sitting at 30, 45 and 60 days that nobody has followed up on this week, because those are still worth close to face value. A written escalation calendar applied to every open invoice, rather than to the ones somebody remembers, is what keeps files out of the courthouse. That is what the stage before judgment collection is for, and it is the part of the process that scales.