The Real Difference Between An Effective Attorney General Complaint And One That Is Likely To Fall Flat (+ Template Complaint Included)

Attorney generals aren't typically interested in your "private" legal dispute. So, before you sit down to file a complaint with the attorney general in your state about some sort of legal issue you're having with a business, you should try to identify which aspects of your legal dispute (if any) might be "a matter of public concern."

Otherwise, it's likely that your filed complaint could either be ignored or quickly shuffled out the door, with no benefit having been derived by you from the time you spent to file and engage with the attorney general complaint. It is very important that you keep that fact in mind as you're crafting your complaint to the attorney general.

If you speed past that this difference, and file your complaint with the attorney general's office anyway, without making any effort to delineate between the "private" aspects of your legal dispute and those that are, in your view, a matter of public concern, then you will likely not get the result your were aiming for when you decided to file the complaint with the attorney general's office. Instead, you will likely receive some sort of templated response that amounts to:

Thanks for letting us know about your issue. But it looks as though this is a private matter, and our office does not get involved in private matters. So, good luck trying to handle this on your own--we're not going to get involved.

So, here's a 4-step guide on how to frame the complaint you wish to file with the attorney general's office in a way that highlights the parts of your legal dispute that are, in your view, "a matter of public concern."

...and thereby give your complaint the best chance to draw interest from the attorney general's office.

(Template included!)