As an investor, you’re at risk of fraud that can decimate your investment portfolio and wipe out all your gains. If that happens, you need a skilled investment fraud lawyer by your side. With their understanding of this complex realm, you can recoup the damages caused by the misconduct of brokerage firms and individual financial advisors. To move forward with confidence that your case is in the right hands, it’s important to understand how to choose an investment fraud lawyer that is right for your case. Here’s how.
Understand When an Investment Fraud Lawyer Can Help
Brokerage firms, financial advisors, and other professionals in the investment world have the duty to always act in good faith for their clients. If they breach that trust with fraudulent actions, then they’re on the hook for your losses.
Major types of investment fraud include:
- Unauthorized trading
- Guaranteed returns
- Unregistered securities
- Churning and reverse churning
- Failure to supervise
There are many more types of investment fraud with the majority difficult to spot with an untrained eye. If anything seems amiss with your portfolio, returns, or investment experience, it just makes sense to talk with an experienced investment fraud attorney.
Ask Around for Referrals and Check All Online Reviews
When investment fraud occurs, you may feel like you don’t know who to trust. As that feeling envelopes you, having to find an attorney can become quite overwhelming. Thankfully, you don’t just have to pick someone at random and hope for the best.
Instead, ask around to see if any of your most trusted friends and family have any experience in hiring an investment fraud attorney. If so, ask them for a referral to someone they trust.
Beyond that, look at all the online reviews for whichever firm you’re considering. The candid reviews can tell you a lot about what to expect from each attorney and narrow down your list of who to hire.
Verify Their Experience and Expertise with Investment Fraud Cases
Once you have a few investment fraud attorneys in mind, research their experience and expertise. Since the litigation process is so complicated, you want someone who knows how to handle all the twists and turns. Lawyers outside this area of expertise simply do not have the skills needed to prove the fraud occurred and recoup your losses.
So, look at how long they’ve been working as an attorney and where they’ve worked over the years. You want someone with lots of experience in your state and also at the federal level if possible. They should have a wide breadth of experience in prosecuting investment fraud lawsuits and many other types of cases.
Upon confirming their experience, check out their education, admissions, and associations. If available, you can also review their publications to get an idea about their perceptions and approach. Since it’s easier to work with an attorney you find relatable, don’t forget to get a feel for their personality and pastimes as well.
Look at Their Track Record of Success in Helping Their Clients
In order to choose the right investment fraud lawyer, you want to look for a strong track record of success to see if the attorneys can potentially get the results you seek. Although investment fraud attorneys cannot speak to the specifics of their cases, they can share where they’ve excelled over the years.
You want to find someone who has a history of representing individual investors in all types of fraud cases, including:
- Negligence
- Ponzi schemes
- Variable annuity fraud
- Real estate investment trusts
They should confidently go up against both huge brokerage firms and individual financial advisors to get justice for their clients. Their efforts should result in the collection of damages to help recoup their clients’ losses.
Schedule Your Free Consultation Appointment
With your findings from the steps above, you should favor at least one investment fraud lawyer. At this point, all that’s left to do is schedule your consultation appointment. Most firms offer their time for free to help you understand if you have a case and what to expect along the way. Although they cannot guarantee you will recoup your losses, they will let you know if you have a good chance of doing so.
It’s important to choose an investment fraud lawyer for your case, and you don’t have a lot of time to file a claim, so it’s important to move through these steps as quickly as possible. If you want to cut right to the chase, you can schedule a free consultation with our team at Schwartz by calling 1-866-618-0545. In addition to discussing your case, we’re happy to share our skills, experience, and results to help you decide if we’re the right firm for you.
