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all right hi again welcome back attorney Steve Andre and we are talking in this video about how to write an awesome demand letter we're not talking good we're not talking great we're talking awesome demand letters okay mediocrity no good okay so this is general legal information only and not legal advice attorney Steve here with you we are going to show you some of my essential tips this is lot for law clerks for those of you out there new to the job and you're like how do I write a demand letter or you're a new lawyer you know or just somebody trying to write a good demand letter I've seen demand letters write written on napkins and and and you know handwritten and you know things that don't look very good I'm gonna show you how to make a nice professional demand letter that gets attention that gets noticed okay that somebody might take serious that's what we're looking for here alright so this is general legal informational and not legal advice but I prepared a little template here this is fresh from the attorney Steve's a hard drive here so it's a sample letter dealing with right of publicity invasion of privacy but let me give you a something before you even get to this demand letter staged and I want to tell you about before you get to the demand letter me personally I never like to write a demand letter unless I know I'm gonna follow through okay because typically your demand letters will end up in the hands of somebody smart maybe another lawyer or somebody vice-president president of a company and they're gonna look at your letter they're gonna assess what's in it they've the facts the exhibits the law they're gonna decide if it's viable is this a viable claim did we really do something wrong here so I always suggest before you write the demand letter go and check out the jury instructions if you're alleging right of publicity copyright infringement whatever the heck you're in you're alleging go look at the jury instructions and look closely at your facts and say can I prove this and I am I can I really prove this am I willing to file a lawsuit now me personally I don't like to send demand letters unless I know I'm gonna follow through and take it all the way so that good first up front step is a very very important step that I encourage you to look into before you right a demand letter okay so with that being said let's get into it here first you want to know exactly where you're sending it me personally I like to go to the top of the food chain right up to the right up to the legal department if something's addressed to the legal department it usually gets there so I like to go right there to the legal department sometimes it's a smaller company they may not have it you may be looking at the CEO vice-president somebody you find them on their website I like to in the next year so that's number one I'd like to send my letters overnight with tracking or certified mail and also an email so you may find the right contact person by looking through somebody's website and you see well there's the CEO I just found another company with a youtube case I'm dealing with I found the legal counsel so I just emailed the legal counsel directly I mean talk about just getting right to your inbox right to the heart of the matter so find out where you're gonna send it make sure you're going to the right person okay sometimes it's a couple people and make sure you have tracking you always need some way to track that they actually got the letter and make sure your email didn't bounce back alright next what's this here this is very simple to me this is regarding it re means regarding some up the letter what is it about what's the beef can you say it in one tiny little sentence demand to cease and desist and pay damages for right of publicity slash invasion of privacy okay you might want to put in if you're dealing with a real estate claim the address of the property if it's some other claim if you have an internal case number that you're using put your internal case number there those kinds of things short sweet and by the way to me a good demand letter an awesome demand letter I should say is like one to two pages maybe three if you're really pushing it however there are times when you have if you if you have a big dollar case and you really want to make sure the other side knows you're serious I mean a demand letter could go for five ten fifteen pages you know with exhibits and in law and everything else so so that's a matter of taste and a matter of what the needs require of the case okay so I also like to include this clause right here I'm just gonna take you right through my letter this is a inside look inside look peeping through the keyhole attorney Steve here okay and I'd like to put this this is a legal demand letter and may affect your legal rights and or the rights of officers directors of the company alleged Sharon please forward to the proper party for immediate response and resolution this letter is for settlement purposes only and is not admissible in court for any purpose now I'm saying that if it's a federal court case and I think aunt issah pate I'm going into federal court I'll usually put a fre Federal Rules of Evidence 408 confidentiality statement in there but you get the idea now that doesn't mean that this is always going to be a hundred percent confidential there are times when the demand letter ends up in the conce or it ends up as part of the lawsuit somewhere for example like in a California consumer legal remedies Act I did a video on this you have to do a notice to cure so being the notice if you had your notice to cure the violation in here that would be that would be part of it okay so but I like to put a statement that this is confidential because it's an investigation I'm just and I'll go into it here more detail but so just address it to the person that you're with dear mr. or mrs. if you don't know dear sir / madam is good and I like that the beginning is just a quick simple salutation who you represent and I usually like to say please direct all correspondence in regard to this matter to my attention okay so that's usually something that I do okay not always but usually something I do so salutation and then just get right into the general background information what some people might call the key facts and it can be detailed or it could be short as you can see here I've got a pretty short one this is all I have it's very simple because I'm trying to keep it short and concise it has come to our attention that your client has scraped in my clients image off of the website put it on their website and this violates my clients right a publicity shouldn't consent to this so forth and so on see exhibit a this is the thing is you want to gather your exhibits and see which ones you want to give them a couple of the key documents and you may wanna withhold the ace up the sleeve the ace up the sleeve but figure out which documents you want to give them okay and it's very simple just attach it so you can see that you're making your point now some people say oh my you know the you know you have some clerks that say wow this is really how do you do the the facts I say what's real easy just pretend like you're writing a letter to your mom or your dad and you're trying to explain something to them that they know nothing about okay and sometimes it's easier if you go one two three four you just make your points like one my client is an internationally renowned model to my client my client has a you know Instagram page with a hundred thousand subscribers you know three you know so you can just do it that simple it's that simple you're just walking somebody through your argument one two three four five these are the key facts and exhibits are used to support what you're saying so they don't just go that's nonsense you want to be able to where you can you want to be able to support what you're saying with factual exhibits okay then I like to give them a chance to if I if I somehow have overlooked something in my initial investigation if you contend you have a license or you receive consent from my client please let me know happy to look into it that kind of thing okay so again you want to keep these cordial and friendly because you're you're gonna be working with this person hopefully to get your case resolved so you don't want to be slinging uh accusing people of crimes I'm gonna report you to the FBI you don't want to be making threats against their person or their property you want to keep this cordial if a judge sees this for whatever reason it's kind of bare it's gonna bear on your professionalism and your credibility so you always want to try to be professional in these letters okay so moving on that's your background information this is kind optional again depending on the type of letter or what's that issue but I like to put in legal contentions and again I before I write my letter I want to know that I have a viable claim I want to look up the jury instructions I want to know that I have something that they're going to have to respond to and it's something that I can go into court and I know I'm going to get past a summary judgment motion okay I know I'm gonna get there because we have the case so I'll put a little section in there of the law you can read this if you wants up to you it's a good little intro on right of publicity law in California so moving on just go to your demand it's very simple what are you looking for your demand and I have demand slash damages if you have any evidence of damages pictures photos you could put all that and their receipts whatever but just you know it's very simple take down her image cease and desist from committing further acts of infringement $5,000 a typical licensing fee and preservation of evidence see below okay we'll talk about that here so but anyway it just be just short and concise what are you looking for to get this resolved going down and it would just say right here if you agree to these terms we will prepare a settlement agreement that releases your client officers and directors and then point out why it's in their best interest to settle because they they may not really realize it so you pointed out hopefully your client will see the benefit in resolving this case which we and not taking it to court which we plan to do if our demands are not met or a reasonable counter offers not received those kinds of things it just depends on your on your case but this could prove costly and time-consuming for our clients which we'd all prefer to avoid if possible and next section deadlines to respond I like to give a deadline to respond because I can put it in my calendar I'm willing to give extensions most lawyers are I'll give you an extra 10 days or 20 30 whatever to investigate on your own and get back to me but I like to set a deadline to try to keep the ball rolling okay if nobody's gonna respond in 14 days that's a lot of time you know maybe they're not interested in resolving okay so that's up to your personal tastes and then a duty to preserve evidence now every States gonna have their own evidence rules I'm citing California evidence Code section 250 this is like a litigation hold you're telling the other party essentially you know if this case goes to trial and it might we're asking you now now to preserve all evidence potentially relevant evidence electronically stored evidence evidence that you have in boxes in a shed somewhere all evidence must be preserved because if we go to court and I show them this letter and I said judge I sent him this letter I got this certify its it was received here's the receipts the Signet sign for I told him to preserve evidence now mysteriously the evidence is gone okay as lawyers you know if this ends up in the hands of a lawyer you-you-you can't advise your clients to destroy evidence so this puts them on notice this puts your opponent on notice to preserve evidence lets them know you're serious and like I said you should be serious if you're going to get to this level in the game okay so duty to preserve you can see what you can read that for yourself and then just a you know just the end hey here's how to contact me here's my office address here's my number my email give me a ring that kind of thing so as you can see they're not real extravagant this one is four pages page four or four so it's a pretty good you know it's got pretty good beef in there but hits the key points short and sweet so it goes a little bit over my one to two pages I guess but you know so it really just depends on on what you're doing what you're writing but that is a general overview of how to write an awesome legal demand letter try to get you some attention and hopefully get your cases settled settlements usually in everybody's best interest where you have a real bona fide dispute and you got facts to support your claim so I hope this has been helpful I hope you enjoyed this it's my pleasure to give you a little insight into some things that may help you out and to my clerks out there this is how I want my demand letters this is how I want them okay so if you have any questions comments post them on my site here we look forward to bringing you some more videos I hope you've enjoyed that I hope you've had a great weekend I got a run got some stuff to do but thanks for watching don't forget to subscribe thanks