Guide
Is this ADA demand letter a scam?
Almost everyone who receives one asks this first, because the letter reads like a shakedown: a plaintiff you have never heard of, a law firm demanding money, a deadline. Here is the uncomfortable answer: the letter is almost certainly real, even when the practice behind it deserves the word predatory. Those are two different questions, and mixing them up is how businesses end up ignoring a real deadline.
Verify it in fifteen minutes
- Look up the law firm. A real firm has a bar-registered attorney whose name matches the signature. Search the attorney's name plus your state bar. The high-volume ADA firms are well documented online; finding pages of complaints about the firm does not make your letter fake, it makes the firm a volume filer.
- Search the plaintiff's name in federal court records. CourtListener (free, run by a nonprofit) indexes federal dockets: search the plaintiff's name and you will typically find dozens of prior cases if you are dealing with a serial filer. Our own filing statistics come from the same records.
- Check what the letter asks for. Real demand letters ask for a settlement and remediation and name specific pages or barriers. Be suspicious of anything asking for gift cards, wire transfers to odd accounts, or payment before any conversation: that pattern is actual fraud, and it is rare in this space precisely because the legal route pays better.
- Do not call the number in the letter first. Verify independently, then let your attorney do the contacting. Responding personally can hurt you whether the letter is real or not.
Why real letters feel fake
The economics explain the tone. A federal ADA claim lets a prevailing plaintiff recover attorney fees, so a small number of firms file at volume with template complaints: the same barriers, the same wording, dozens of defendants a month. Your letter probably was not written about your site so much as generated against it. That is exactly why an independent audit changes the conversation: when a template complaint lists forty issues and your audit shows twelve are real, your attorney negotiates from facts. The published settlement data shows what is at stake.
What if I ignore it?
The documented follow-up to an ignored demand letter is a filed complaint in federal court, at which point deadlines are court deadlines, costs include the plaintiff's growing attorney fees, and your options are narrower. Ignoring is a decision; make it with counsel or not at all. The full sequence of what to do instead is in our first 72 hours guide.
Common questions
The plaintiff has filed 300 lawsuits. Does that get the case dismissed?
Courts have generally allowed serial plaintiffs to keep filing; a handful of firms have faced sanctions, but do not build your response on that hope. Your attorney will know the current state of play in your circuit.
The letter gives me 21 days. Is that a legal deadline?
It is the sender's deadline, not a court's, but it is real in the practical sense: it is the window before they escalate. Use it to get advice and facts, not to draft your own reply.
I fixed my website last year. Can I still get one of these?
Yes. Serial filers re-test, and sites drift out of shape with every redesign. A dated independent audit of the current site is the record that protects the work you did.