I keep seeing these firms with some twenty lawyers involved in helping brokers clean up their U5 records.
You only need one good lawyer to get this done right. You don’t need to have a bunch of folks standing around some breakroom gabbing about your case and billing you more hours for a job one person can do.
Why pay for the overhead of some “Big Firm?” This is especially true if the lawyers available in the “Our Team” section of their website aren’t even all that, with JDs from lower-tier schools, not many years of litigation trigger time under their belts, and worst of all, no prior experience having worked as brokers themselves!
Many of the lawyers from outfits like that also don’t have any experience in-house as litigation counsel or as compliance officers who’ve ever had to fill out someone’s U5! Like these people are going to understand what you’ve just been through with your former employer or how your employer’s counsel thinks when push comes to shove. Unlikely.
For these reasons, I implore anyone with fresh dirt on their U5 to consider these issues before hiring counsel to help them seek expungement. As a former broker myself, and as someone who has worked in-house both in FINRA member firms’ legal and compliance departments, I understand what you’re going through, what they’re really up to, and what needs to be done to help you.
