A Judgment Broker is an entity that quickly (and for free) helps original judgment creditors (the entity that won the lawsuit and owns the judgment, or now owns the judgment) find the right expert to buy or recover their judgment.

Judgment Brokers help all good people in the judgment enforcement business. The term and concept of a “Judgment Broker” was invented and implemented by John Adams of JudgmentBuy in 2008, and first written about in this article on May 1, 2010. Even though the word “broker” has been tarnished by those in the real estate field, a good judgment broker like me, has never burned anyone.

While other people (who used to hide behind cloaked domain names) have registered JudgmentBroker.com and JudgmentBrokers.com, it is not the domain, it is what you do with it. Those are good domain names, but they have nothing to do with a judgment broker.

When you think of searching on the web, you think Google, Bing, or Yahoo. When you think of a free judgment broker to help you get money for your judgment, you should think JudgmentBuy.

The Judgment Broker helps by matching owners of judgments with either judgment buyers, lawyers, and judgment enforcers; who then attempt to recover the money owed on the judgment so that the original owners can be paid.

There are millions of judgments and many thousands of judgment buyers and recovery specialists, so why is a Judgment Broker needed?

The first reason a Judgment Broker is needed is that unlike fungible instruments such as money or gold, a judgment’s value depends on many things including the debtor and their assets, laws, the economy, and the skills and location of the judgment enforcement specialist or judgment buyer.

The second reason a Judgment Broker is needed is because most judgments are never collected because laws tend to make it difficult to collect from debtors. A few judgments are sold for cash, especially in states where future contingency payment for judgments is not allowed.

Judgments sold for cash sell for very steep discounts from their face values. The average judgment sold for cash sells for an average of less than 3%. For this reason, most judgments that are recovered are purchased on a contingency future-payment basis. Future-payment means that the original judgment creditor gets paid after the money is recovered from the debtor’s assets.

What does a Judgment Broker do? They attract and research judgments, noting all the factors that determine who is best suited to enforce or buy the creditor’s judgment. The Judgment Broker (and anyone else) only be paid if and when the original judgment creditor is repaid. The Judgment Broker has every incentive to pick the best-suited judgment enforcers and buyers to maximize the chances of successful recoveries of every possible judgment. That is all they do, they no longer recover judgments so the broker stays objective.

The Judgment Broker maintains a constantly updated database of the best judgment enforcers and buyers, and knows and introduces to the creditor, the best match close to the judgment debtor and their assets. The Judgment Broker may pick one judgment enforcer for a small claims judgment, and another for a larger judgment involving fraud.

For each judgment, the Judgment Broker contacts their best judgment expert closest to the judgment debtor’s assets. This is done without bothering the original judgment creditor. Also, a judgment broker preserves the privacy of both creditors and debtors, sharing any private information only with the one expert they will soon introduce the creditor to.

After a match of the right judgment expert for a particular judgment has been made, the Judgment Broker introduces the original judgment creditor to the judgment expert, the Judgment Broker steps out of the picture. The Judgment Broker then moves on to match the next judgment, for the next original judgment creditor.

Note that the Judgment Broker never legally owns judgments, as that could create complications in the chain of ownership, which is important because most judgment experts are not lawyers.

Judgment enforcers must own a judgment in full, so they can “step into the shoes” of the original judgment creditor for judgment enforcement procedures. For this reason, a Judgment Broker can be thought of as a Judgment Enforcement Catalyst. (A catalyst helps start and speeds up a process, without being affected by the process.)

The Judgment Broker cannot guarantee the performance of judgment enforcers they recommend, as the judgment enforcers are not employees of the Judgment Broker; they are independent entities. The Judgment Broker also cannot guarantee the enforceability of any judgment – because nobody can because everything depend on the available assets of the judgment debtor.

Because the Judgment Broker is only paid (by the judgment expert, from the money recovered from the debtor’s assets) for success, the Judgment Broker has every incentive to recommend their estimation of the most qualified judgment experts.

Note that using a Judgment Broker does not cost the original judgment creditor anything. The judgment expert pays a small share of profits to the Judgment Broker, only if the judgment is profitably recovered. Judgment enforcers also pay nothing up-front for JudgmentBuy’s screened judgment leads.

In return for paying a small percentage of their potential profits, the expert gets pre-screened judgments, matched to be in the same city as the judgment debtor’s assets. Most judgment experts are very willing to pay a small percentage of their potential profit for no obligation, no payment up-front, screened, verified, and customized location-matched leads.

The Judgment Broker also pays anyone for good (not raw) judgment leads. In most cases, the Judgment Broker pays half of what they get when the judgment is successfully enforced. Experienced judgment enforcers do not take judgments too far away from them. The same judgment experts that accept judgment leads from the Judgment Broker typically also refers judgment leads to the Judgment Broker.

The judgment broker fills an important role in helping the original judgment creditor increase their chances of getting paid.