A single lawsuit reveals little on its own. It’s the next few cases, as the same names and claims begin to resurface, that make a filing matter. Litigation risk takes shape in that accumulation—in how quickly actions stack up and spread from one trial court to another.
One litigation compliance executive at a debt collection agency came to Trellis with exactly that problem. His role spans litigation risk, regulatory compliance, and debt recovery, requiring him to look beyond the actions already facing his organization and anticipate what might reach it next.
Today, he uses Trellis to identify new claims, track the people driving them, and act on potential risks earlier. This is how he built an early-warning system for litigation—one designed to catch isolated cases before they start stacking up.
The missing layer
Much of his work requires close coordination with outside counsel to investigate lawsuits and regulatory complaints. That involvement gives him a direct view into how the two converge.
“[R]egulatory complaints and lawsuits aren’t tremendously different from one another,” he observes. “Staying involved in both of those is very helpful.”
To do this, he used to rely on the same channels used by many other compliance leaders. He tracked federal court activity, leaned on outside counsel, and followed industry publications to understand litigation risk and identify new developments.
“At the federal level, we could monitor,” he recalls. “We could see cases at the federal level. Our attorneys could see them [there too].”
But, when it came to monitoring the state trial courts, he lacked the same visibility. Without that visibility, he could see claims once they had gained momentum, but rarely as they were first taking form. That gap in coverage shaped what could come next, narrowing the moves he could make in response.
Visibility without compromise
Litigation can spread quickly. A successful claim against one large collections agency often leads to copycat complaints. Once a specific legal theory gains traction, filings begin to cluster around the same allegations, sometimes spreading across multiple jurisdictions. Before Trellis, he couldn’t see those patterns developing at the state trial court level.
“Trellis closed that gap.”
Early visibility, however, couldn’t come at the expense of privacy. Several of the case-monitoring solutions he considered required access to sensitive internal data. For him, that was a nonstarter. He liked that Trellis took a different approach.
“One of the advantages of Trellis is that they’re not collecting non-public information, and they’re not providing non-public information,” he says. With Trellis, he doesn’t have to trade privacy for visibility.
Early signals in motion
From there, Trellis alerts drive the workflow.
When a new state trial court filing matches his monitoring criteria, he receives a focused snapshot—who filed the case, where, and under what general legal theories. The goal isn’t deep docket research. It’s early visibility into the claims and people shaping the litigation landscape at any given moment.
To keep these alerts focused, he worked with a Trellis customer success manager to build queries around the most significant litigation risks. His queries start with the claims themselves. “[Trellis] was instrumental in building these queries,” he says. “Once we knew what the specific law was that they were citing, we were able to create a query related to that unique claim.”
In his industry, that means monitoring the ‘big three’: FDCPA, TCPA, and FCRA claims. “Looking for the lawsuits that are filed with those kinds of claims is a start.” From there, he shifts his focus accordingly. Some attorneys file at high volume, and he monitors their activity across jurisdictions. “We have a query set up with Trellis so that we can see all of the cases [these attorneys are] filing within certain states,” he says.
He also watches for plaintiffs who appear repeatedly in different lawsuits. “What I get on almost every case is the first and last name of the plaintiff and the county and state where [the case] was filed,” he explains. He cross-references those details with internal records. When a match appears, he can review and adjust collections activity before the dispute escalates.
Clarity and connection at Trellis
“There are so many things that we do to mitigate lawsuits,” he reflects. “It would be impossible to determine how many lawsuits we’ve prevented. I have no idea how to gauge that.” With Trellis, what matters to him isn’t a number. It’s the shift in how he works.
“Know what you want,” he says to anyone thinking about adopting a legal analytics platform. “There’s no shortage of data out there. All of it,” he says, “is useful, but it’s not all useful to everyone.” It’s the sorting that matters. “Being able to articulate to Trellis exactly what I wanted helped them create filters, create queries—do what needed to be done so that I could get [the information] I wanted.”
That’s the principle guiding the way Trellis works with its customers.
“There’s got to be a connection.”
FAQ
A debt collection agency can create searches for lawsuits that reference the FDCPA, TCPA, FCRA, or related claim language, then receive alerts when matching cases appear in covered state courts. Searches can also focus on particular jurisdictions, attorneys, firms, or parties. Trellis helps compliance teams build targeted searches across state trial court records, reducing the need to check individual court systems manually.
The agency can monitor newly filed cases involving similar companies, collection practices, statutes, plaintiffs, and attorneys. A single case may reveal little, but repeated allegations or filings can indicate that a legal theory is gaining traction. Trellis gives compliance teams earlier visibility into these state court patterns, allowing them to investigate relevant accounts or practices before the same type of claim reaches their organization.
Federal monitoring does not capture lawsuits filed and litigated solely in state trial courts. As a result, an agency may miss local claim patterns, active plaintiffs’ attorneys, repeat plaintiffs, or legal theories developing across particular counties and states. Trellis fills that visibility gap by making covered state trial court records searchable and alerting teams to relevant filings that would not appear on a federal docket.
A compliance team can create a search using the attorney’s or firm’s name and narrow it by jurisdiction, claim type, statute, or other case details. Because names may vary between court records, the search may need to account for spelling and firm-name variations. Trellis allows teams to configure attorney- and firm-focused searches across covered state courts and receive alerts when new matching lawsuits are filed.
Teams can compare new cases for recurring plaintiff names, attorneys, allegations, statutes, complaint language, and filing locations. Repetition across several cases may indicate coordinated activity, a high-frequency filer, or a claim being replicated in new jurisdictions. Trellis helps surface these connections across covered state trial courts, giving agencies a way to investigate patterns that would be difficult to recognize from isolated dockets.
The agency should look for multiple lawsuits presenting similar allegations, citing the same law, or being filed by the same attorneys against comparable companies. Filing frequency and geographic spread can help distinguish an isolated claim from a developing trend. Trellis enables compliance teams to monitor distinctive claim language, statutes, parties, and attorneys across state courts so they can see when a theory begins appearing in additional cases or jurisdictions.
Compliance teams need a centralized view of state trial court filings rather than relying only on federal dockets or updates about matters already assigned to outside counsel. Broader monitoring can reveal relevant cases before the organization becomes directly involved. Trellis supplements those existing resources with searchable state trial court data and configurable alerts, helping internal teams watch the wider litigation landscape while outside counsel focuses on specific matters.
Yes. Public court records can be searched for cases involving selected companies, types of defendants, legal claims, attorneys, or collection practices. Monitoring these cases can reveal risks affecting the wider industry without relying on access to another company’s private information. Trellis helps agencies follow relevant state court litigation involving peer organizations and identify claims or filing patterns that may eventually affect their own operations.
A new-lawsuit alert may include the case name, parties, filing date, case number, court, county, state, attorneys, law firms, and available information about the claims involved. The exact details depend on what the source court makes publicly available. Trellis provides a focused snapshot of a matching state trial court case, helping compliance teams determine whether the filing warrants additional research or an internal account review.
Yes. An agency can monitor information available in public court records without uploading customer files, account histories, collection notes, or other internal data. Its team can compare relevant filing details with company records inside its own environment. Trellis uses public state trial court information to support lawsuit monitoring, allowing agencies to gain early visibility without providing Trellis with non-public customer or account data.
Teams can compare the allegations, practices, statutes, locations, and parties appearing in their complaint data with patterns found in newly filed lawsuits. Similarities may indicate that a recurring complaint issue is developing into litigation risk. Trellis supplies the state court side of that analysis by helping teams monitor relevant lawsuits, while the company keeps and reviews its consumer complaint and account information within its own internal systems.
An agency should evaluate state court coverage, search flexibility, alert quality, public-record sourcing, privacy practices, and the ability to monitor statutes, attorneys, firms, parties, and jurisdictions. It should also consider whether the provider can help turn the agency’s risk priorities into focused searches. Trellis combines state trial court data with configurable alerts and customer support that can help compliance teams build queries around their most significant litigation concerns.