This tool lets users send fake legal letters that look real—without a lawyer

If you can’t afford a lawyer, it turns out there’s nothing stopping you from sending a scary-looking letter that, at first glance, seems to come from one—and hoping the recipient doesn’t read the fine print too closely.

That’s the idea behind Heavyweight, a tool that lets you take any complaint and format it with an official-looking letterhead, without ever actually claiming to be from a real lawyer.

“If you’ve ever received a legal notice like a Cease and Desist, you know that the ‘oh shit’ moment doesn’t happen once you actually read the letter,” multimedia artist and software developer Morry Kolman explained in a now-viral X post earlier this week. “It happens the second you open it and realize a lawyer is mad at you.”

That’s the power dynamic the project aims to subvert. Kolman created the free, online, open-source tool with Kendra Albert, a public interest and media technology lawyer, after the two were paired at Rhizome’s annual 7×7 program last month. First and foremost an art project—and definitely not legal advice—Heavyweight aims to democratize “the aesthetics of (in lieu of access to) legal representation,” according to a blog post about the project.

“We wanted to make Heavyweight to show a lot of the power of the law, and this perceived importance and seriousness does not actually come from the letter of the law necessarily. It comes from how those letters are presented visually,” Kolman tells Fast Company. Take, for example, a big fancy letterhead, or an official-sounding address. “This is a project about design. It’s a project about aesthetics. It’s a project about how things look,” he added.

While Kolman makes clear that a Heavyweight letter won’t hold up in court—nor is it intended to—“there’s nothing stopping you from making something that looks just as snooty and sending it to some obstinate landlord or customer service department to make them shit their pants,” he wrote on X.

On the Heavyweight website, any aggrieved party can create their own legal-looking letter, choose the law firm’s floor (from 1st to 100th), the year it was founded (as far back as 1775), and even the “snootiness level” of the font. You can change the number of firm partners and generate their names from categories like “Greenwich, Connecticut, town representatives” or “equestrian riders.” Simply download the PDF and send it to whoever has landed on your bad side.

The X post announcing the project quickly went viral, with 1.5 million views at the time of writing. “Lawyer here: Dying laughing,” one X user commented. “This is incredible. I have so many people to spook,” another added.

Not everyone was amused. “This might not be illegal, but I can practically guarantee the court system will magically think otherwise,” one user warned. “Actually a great idea until the recipient has a lawyer, and now you are tainted with this bad faith act in any future litigation,” another wrote.

Kolman expected the controversy and advised anyone sending letters to do so at their own risk. Some fair use examples might include a landlord who has been ignoring your request to fix a broken dishwasher for months, or a client who’s stopped returning your emails.

“I think those situations, when you are basically just trying to go from ignorable mote to annoying horsefly, are a pretty good use case for when to send a Heavyweight letter,” Kolman said. “I’ve used it myself to send a letter to a customer service email that wasn’t giving me any of my money back.”

Sadly, it didn’t work.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91373658/this-tool-lets-users-send-fake-legal-letters-that-look-real-without-a-lawyer?partner=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=rss+fastcompany&utm_content=rss