Texas Apartment Communities have unique needs when it comes to evictions. Understanding this is part of what sets Girling Law apart from its competitors.
Net 30 Billing Terms
Texas Apartment Communities have varying corporate and management structures. This means most larger Apartment Communities have billing needs that are different than that of independent rental owners and other single-owner or partnered organizations. Girling law features billing options designed specifically to accommodate these billing needs.
When you work with Girling Law, your company will sign one client agreement for the year. This locks in our firm’s prices for up to 12 months. And there are no restrictions. If you decide our firm is not a good fit for your team, nothing prevents you from terminating your agreement with us or simply hiring a different law firm.
As the apartments you manage find they have a need for eviction representation, your staff will merely submit to our firm an instruction to start working on the eviction. There are no client agreements to sign. There are no retainer payments to acquire and mail off. Therefore, there are no delays because of administrative details. Girling Law will often start working on the eviction the same day your staff submits the eviction order. Girling Law even advances your filing fee costs. You will receive an electronic invoice when the case ends. Payment for that invoice is due 30 days after issuance. Our invoices are always payable online.
Stepped Flat Fees
No more paying a full fee because you hired an attorney only to discover your tenant moved out days later.
Girling Law breaks its eviction service into the eviction’s constituent parts and then charges you as work begins on each constituent part. Here is an example:
Let’s say your client agreement with our firm included the following list of steps for a County Court eviction*:
| Step # | Task Description | Cost |
| 1 | File setup fee | $75.00 |
| 2 | Background check – one for each Tenant named on the lease | $59.00 |
| 3 | Gather documentary evidence and/or photos evidencing misconduct. Identify trial witnesses. (charged on conduct evictions only) | $270.00 |
| 4 | Amend and file petition, certificate of last known address, affidavit of non-military service | $240.00 |
| 5 | Attorney review of petition, certificate of last known address, and affidavit of nonmilitary service | $147.50 |
| 6 | Draft and file a Motion for Immediate Writ of Possession, Proposed Order, and Affidavit in Support | $109.00 |
* The services and prices listed in this table may not be current.
Your Property Manager submits to the Girling Law team a new non-payment of rent eviction order for a unit with two tenants named on the lease. Six days later, she discovers the tenants have vacated the unit. She immediately sends her point of contact at Girling Law an email with an instruction to stop work on the case. At the time Girling Law received your Property Manager’s “stop work” instruction, our Paralegal was in the middle of drafting the pleadings for the case (Step 4). Girling Law will then issue an invoice for $433.00.
This price includes the file setup fee, two background checks (one for each named tenant), and the work performed from the Paralegal starting to draft pleadings (step 4). There is no charge for step 3 because this is a non-payment of rent eviction not, a conduct eviction.
Compare this to the practice of an attorney who requires an up-front flat fee of $1,200.00 and then he keeps the entire payment.
Streamlined Eviction Orders with Your Customized Eviction Ordering Page
Girling Law will not take a week to start your evictions. In nearly all instances, our firm will start work on your eviction the same day.
Our billing and client agreement process are only two of the three reasons we can do this. The third reason is that Girling Law will provide your Apartment Communities with the resources needed to enable Girling Law’s team to quickly start work on your eviction orders.
For every one of your Apartment Communities, Girling Law will provide a unique landing page on Girling Law’s website. After Girling Law builds this landing page, a Girling Law team member will provide the URL to each of your Apartment Community staff members and complete a very brief orientation call. These calls are brief because the page is VERY simple. The page has only three tabs:
Your employees will select the “Eviction Order” tab. From there, they are taken to a screen where they can do the following:
- Select the eviction type (Justice of the Peace or County Court at Law)
- Data enter the tenant and unit information
- Provide details on the reasons for evicting
- Select optional services like having Girling Law issue notices to vacate, notices to cure, lease
- termination notices, or handling the writ of possession
- Uploading the case documents (lease, ledger, notice to vacate, etc.).
Authority Compliance
Following the covid pandemic, Legal Aid organizations have had a more frequent presence in eviction courtrooms.
Legal Aid organizations have since started benefitting from several double standards that disadvantage landlords and real estate investors. Many courts in Dallas Fort Worth have started providing free office space to these Legal Aid organizations. Mr. Girling has asked several Judges for free office space for his staff. So far, none of these Judges have indulged his requests! Members of legal aid now routinely ask tenants if they would like free legal help as the tenants are walking into the eviction courtroom. Texas ethics rules prevent landlord attorneys from making the same solicitations to their potential clients. Prior to the Judge calling the eviction docket, some Judges in the area will permit Legal Aid representatives to give short presentations to tenants on how they can fight their evictions. Landlord attorneys are not permitted to provide similar presentations to landlords. With an environment like this, Apartment Community staff really do have the cards stacked against them.
To make things worse, Legal Aid has started employing a number of dirty tricks. Landlord attorneys now regularly observe Legal Aid attorneys obtaining dismissals because the Apartment Community’s lease references its corporate entity name as the landlord instead of the apartment community name. One of Legal Aid’s favorite dirty tricks is to show the court irregularities in the apartment community’s corporate filings or assumed name certificates, none of which have anything to do with the fact the tenant has gone months without paying rent. Legal Aid attorneys have even resorted to providing eviction Judges printouts of outdated lists of an apartment community being identified as having federally backed mortgages. Tenant-friendly Judges are happy to entirely disregard the apartment community employee’s testimony that the list is outdated and that the apartment community is now owned by a new business that does not have a mortgage. These Judges will gladly ignore the fact that these lists are maintained by third-party, non-government charities that represent the interest of tenants! Some Legal Aid organizations have recently taken to menacing Judges the Legal Aid attorneys regard to be too landlord friendly. Girling Law has even experienced a Legal Aid attorney instructing his tenant-client to renege on the terms of his settlement agreement when unforeseen changes in the law made enforcing the agreement impossible.
If you are the owner or representative of an apartment community, Legal Aid is a problem for you.
Girling Law takes steps to ensure your cases are a step ahead of Legal Aid organizations by obtaining the documents needed to show the apartment community’s authority to act as a plaintiff in an eviction lawsuit. If we find problems, we will work with you to correct them. When our firm onboards a new apartment community, the first thing we do is a title search. We then look up the apartment’s corporate filings. We want to ensure your paperwork is current and all the dots between the corporate entity, deeds, leases, and assumed names (the d/b/a) are connected. When our attorneys walk into court, they are armed with the documentation needed to overcome Legal Aid’s underhanded attempts to attack your business’s authority to evict one of your problem tenants. And the best part is that Girling Law does not charge for this part of the service.
Complementary Employee Training
Girling Law also recognizes that most Texas Apartment Communities cannot offer competitive rents and also have an attorney handle every eviction. In most instances, Property Managers need to handle the Justice of the Peace evictions, particularly in lower income communities. This is why our firm will partner with your company’s Property Managers to ensure your staff understand the eviction process. The legal standards in Justice of the Peace Courts are much lower than those of County Courts at Law, which hear (de novo) eviction appeals. This is why you may have experienced a win before a Justice of the Peace, only to lose in front of the County Court at Law. Girling Law’s Apartment Community clients enjoy training aimed at having your Property Managers and other staff stage their Justice of the Peace evictions for an appeal to a County Court at Law. This critical training maximizes your apartments’ chances of success should your tenants appeal.
Access to Law Firm Documents
Your staff regularly has a need to deliver legal documents to tenants. These often do not require the involvement of an attorney. And they certainly should not require the involvement of a $500.00 payment.
Your apartment community’s landing page will include a “Documents” tab that includes a library of templates for legal documents. Many of these are even on our firm’s letterhead! Conditioned upon the requirement in your client agreement with our firm that your employees make no additions or admissions other than the data entered into the template’s webform, your employees are free to use these forms at no additional cost.
Vendor Compliance
Girling Law is presently an active member on RealPages Vendor Credentialing. Our vendor number is 1180256.
We are happy to join other vendor credentialing services. If your vendor credentialing requires you to issue an invitation to our firm, you may use the following information:
- Email: [email protected]
- Phone: 972 905-1006
- Website: girlinglaw.com
- Physical Address: 6833 Coit Rd., Suite 107, Plano, TX 75024