When filing a mechanics lien or delivering a preliminary notice, trust and security is key. Any mistake in the prepared documents can undermine your company’s security rights and cost big money. Further, since the mechanics lien transaction is conducted over the Internet, your company will be transmitting sensitive financial or payment information over the web.

When it comes to providing a trustworthy and secure environment to file mechanic liens or preliminary notices, there’s absolutely no match to Zlien.

To highlight Zlien’s security precautions, the site added a “Security Precautions” page and logo to its website.

This new page takes the visitor through Zlien’s security and trust protocols. Regarding site security, the page displays Zlien’s SSL badge and outlines the company’s procedures to safeguard credit card information.  Regarding trustworthiness, the page displays a VeriSign trust badge and gives detailed information about Zlien’s license, bond and errors and omissions insurance policy.

If you want to Lien Smart, you need to find a quality and trustworthy mechanic’s lien filing and management service. Zlien is trusted by clients all across the country.  We have the world’s best ordering and management system, and we’ve made it a priority to provide our clients a secure and trusting environment.

Come see the difference today, and file a mechanic’s lien with Zlien.

The mechanics lien and preliminary notice business is not without its complications. Just as it’s complicated for a construction business to manage all the nuances in mechanics lien compliance, the same difficulty presents itself to those lien and notice companies. Trusting your notices and liens to a service provider is not a decision to take lightly, as any small mistake can impact your rights. Here are three things to think about and ask your mechanics lien service before committing:

 1) How Do You Keep Up With Law Changes and Compliance Issues?

If a mechanic’s lien service provider doesn’t have a plan and a consistent policy to monitor law changes and compliance issues, consider this a huge red flag.  State legislatures make at least 5-10 changes to mechanic’s lien and bond claim laws somewhere in the United States, and court decisions are constantly making tiny alterations. Each decision and state legislative bill may impact the lien and notice forms to use, as well as service requirements, timing issues, and more (Check out our Lien Law Alerts category, which publishes lien law changes nationwide).

When you ask a provider about their compliance procedures, they may tell you that they have a “network of attorneys.”  Well, consider this a red flag too.

Having a “network of attorneys” is just a fancy way of telling you they have a list of attorneys in every state.  Big deal.  I can give you hundreds of lists of attorneys who do construction law or construction lien work.  I promise you, having a “network of attorneys” is not going to notify that mechanic’s lien provider each time a lien law changes, or help them ensure that their forms and procedures are compliant.

There’s another problem with the “network of attorneys” claim. These type of mechanic lien providing companies usually act as a simple referral house for attorneys. Each time you order a preliminary notice or a mechanic’s lien, you’re going to be shuffled off to an “in-network attorney” to fulfill your order.  There are three negative implications to this type of business method:

1. If you’re working in multiple states, you’re not likely to have the same attorney help you in each place, which is going to be confusing and inconsistent.  You want a single vendor you can work with to get these things processed.
2. When you get shuffled off to an attorney, you’re going to get contacted by that attorney, you’re going to get charged attorney prices, and these attorney’s are going to followup with you to try and convert the lead into more legal work.
3. Finally, the company itself doesn’t do anything for you, they are just a clearing house or referral manager for this attorney network.

An example of a vendor who has a “network of attorneys” type business model is NLB Access.  While they may not function exactly as I’ve outlined in the above section, they are certainly a type of service that will process your preliminary notice and mechanics lien orders by utilizing a network of attorneys across the country.

NLB Access tries to spin this as a positive.  On the “Solutions” page of their website, they say:

Some notice filing companies may be cheaper, but NLB provides you with a case load manager that is an experienced legal professional who will review and process your claims..Our General Counsel’s office, in collaboration with local counsel, will inform you of your rights and create an effective strategy to recover your money.

I may be wrong about this, but imagine trying to work with these people if you need 100 notices sent within a month in 5 states.  Will you be shuffling from local counsel to local counsel?  And who knows how much they would charge for this (they don’t have flat rates posted on their website)?

2) What Is Your System For Fulfilling Orders?

Managing preliminary notices, mechanic liens and bond claims on a number of projects is challenging. When an order comes into a mechanic lien service for a new lien or notice, what does the company use to fulfill that order? How do they know what form to use? How do they actually get the form filled, and what courier network do they have in place to get your document delivered or recorded?

All very important questions. When learning about a lien service provider’s system, listen in to see what they do to reduce the risk of errors. When handling hundreds of envelopes and pages of paper every day or week, being organized and having a system that reduces the risk of error is a key feature.

Unfortunately, if you peel back the onion, you may find out something scary:  A lot of these lien services don’t have any system at all.  Sometimes, they just have a staff with access to a server where there is a folder and bunch of document template forms. If you’re working with a lien service operating like this, you should hear “document templates” and equate it with “disorganized mess.”

Zlien has spent five years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in developing a state-of-the-art order fulfillment system. This works on two ends. On the front end, when you’re placing an order, the system guides the user through the various forms available to choose the right form for the job. On the back end, when a order is placed, our staff members automatically have everything they need to fulfill the order.Forms are automatically generated and filled-in with your client data, and there are a host of features that monitor our staff members work to mitigate the risk of error.

Another thing to keep in mind is order tracking.  You will want to know the progress of your order as it is being processed.  Is this something your lien service will perform automatically, or are you getting manual emails from your provider giving you an update when they get around to it?

If you’re getting manual emails, beware.  This means the lien service provider is probably managing all of their orders manually, and it is surprisingly easy for them to get busy and forget all about your project.

Zlien is proud of its automatic system progress emails, which was actually just updated and posted about here.

3) Are You A Licensed Legal Document Preparer and Insured?

Once you are comfortable about a lien service providers systems and compliance procedures, you next want to turn to something that is perhaps most important: Their credentials and security.

Here are some issues to keep in mind:

Are They Licensed?

The Legal Document Preparation and/or Software industry may not need a law license, but in some jurisdictions, there are laws that regulate these service providers.  The state of California, for example, does specifically recognize “Legal Document Assistants,” and requires that they have a license to prepare legal forms for that state. There are also some regulations on how these companies may advertise themselves.

Zlien is a licensed Legal Document Assistant in the State of California (LDA-352).  If your lien service company purports to prepare legal forms in the State of California without an LDA license, it is breaking the law.  And it’s easy to figure out if the lien service is actually licensed.  California statutes require LDAs to put their license number on their website in their footer.

I can give you an example of two companies who are purporting to prepare mechanic liens and preliminary notices in California without a license. LienItNow.com does not have their LDA license information in their website’s footer, and Tradition Notice Services (from Tradition Software) does not have their LDA license information in their website’s footer.  A construction company ought be careful in using these services.

Are They Insured?

Mistakes happen.  Period.  There’s no such thing as a perfect anything.  If you’re trusting your mechanic lien or bond claim rights to a lien service provider, you would be well served to see whether that company carriers errors and omissions insurance.  If they carry errors and omissions insurance, it means that company is serious about their business (they invest in E&O Coverage) and serious about serving their clients (they won’t leave you hanging).

Not only does Zlien carry errors & omissions insurance, but we also publish our insurance policy’s declarations page on our website.  Ask your lien service provider for their insurance information.

Some readers may have noticed this Construction Lien Blog underwent a design overhaul two or three weeks ago. We let it go without mentioning, as it was just a first step toward this complete overhaul. The blog’s new design now matches Zlien’s website, as we went live with the redesign over the weekend.

Although there are significant design enhancements with the new site design, I consider these two as the most significant improvements:

Mechanics Lien & Preliminary Notice Resources

When we set out to redesign the Zlien website, creating a more organized and user-friendly mechanics’s lien resource center was our top priority, and we believe we successfully redesigned this element of our offerings.

Now, the user can click on a state, and be brought to that state’s homepage for lien and notice resources.  All resources, whether it be deadline charts, state projects, private projects, statutes or forms, are all easily accessible from one spot online.  Plus, we even pump our mechanic’s lien law alerts from this blog onto the state’s homepage.

In addition to the design enhancements, we also have content enhancements.  There are more mechanic lien law and preliminary notice requirements published on the Zlien website than ever before, and we’ve got the web’s most extensive mechanic’s lien and preliminary notice forms database.  The best part about all of these forms?  They’re organized, easy to find, and free.

The Fastest, Smartest and Easiest Ordering System On The Planet

Although our Mechanic’s Lien Ordering System was the best and most sophisticated on the planet, we thought it could be even better. Now, it is.

We’ve improved our progress bar, so that instead of seeing a generic colored bar, you can see each step that is required to complete your order and just how much further you have left to fill out.  We’ve completely re-designed our order contact management system, making it more intuitive and easy to add project contacts to your order.  We’ve utilized APIs to match zip codes, cities, states and counties to ensure order accuracy. And finally, we’ve just made the dang thing look prettier.

If your company needs to deliver a preliminary notice, or file a mechanic’s lien or bond claim, there isn’t a faster, easier or more accurate way to get this done.  The Zlien Filing Wizard is the best on the planet, and you can give it a shot here: Order A Mechanic’s Lien Now.

Whenever an order is placed with Zlien, the client gets system generated emails that lead them through the order’s process.  Our clients complained that these emails were a bit text heavy and confusing. All the information was there, but the user wasn’t able to take a single glance at the email and know what was going on with their order.  We listened.

We know our clients are busy, and want something easy on the eyes.  Can we communicate everything about their order with just a two second glance?

Now, we think so.

Take a look at the new email format:

An easy to read graphical progress bar shows clients instantly their order’s progress. Beneath it, in yellow, a link is provided for easy and immediate access to the order’s documents. The document link is transmitted to the client securely by email, and no login is required.

Then, if the client wants more information about the order’s progress, that information is provided below.

Thanks to all of our clients for their feedback. We’re executed about the launch of this minor, yet important, update to our service.

A few months ago I wrote a post titled “4 Reasons Its Smart To Outsource Your Preliminary Notice Work.“  Outsourcing preliminary notice and mechanics lien management to a company like Zlien is a smart decision. To come full circle on this Supplier Series of articles, I’ll go back to the very first post in the series addressing the challenges material suppliers face in the mechanics lien context, and I’ll discuss how Zlien can help your material supply company with each.

Zlien Helps Material Suppliers Understand When Notices Are Required

The first challenge highlighted in Top 4 Mechanics Lien Law Challenges For Material Suppliers and Materialmen is “knowing whether a state’s law contains any nuances applicable only to them that require preliminary notices.”

The summary is this: Material suppliers most frequently have notice requirements and it’s difficult to keep up with all of the nuances in state laws to determine when a notice is required, what the preliminary notice form should look like, the method of delivery required, and who should receive the notice.

Zlien can help with this problem because it uses a proprietary web-based software application to calculate a party’s notice and mechanic lien requirements based on basic project information. Material suppliers who use Zlien can essentially forget about all the complexities in mechanic lien laws.  With basic project information, Zlien’s system figures out what must be filed, when, how and to who, and then simply does it.

Material Suppliers trying to comply with mechanic lien laws face the task of navigating a very complex set of legal requirements. Zlien manages that compliance.

Zlien Can Manage The High-Volume of Paperwork for High-Volume of Projects

The second challenge highlighted in Top 4 Mechanics Lien Law Challenges For Material Suppliers and Materialmen is that most material supply companies are furnishing materials to a high volume of projects.  Unlike a subcontractor or prime contractor, for example, who signs 1 or 2 new contracts per month, a material supplier may be furnishing to 20, 50, 100, 500 or more projects each month!

Forget about navigating legal compliance issues, just think about the paperwork involved.  Different projects and different states require different preliminary notice forms, each time a notice is sent it must be tracked to ensure delivery, and you must keep records of everything sent and the proof you have of delivery.  Keeping this paperwork in order is a task of its own.

Zlien alleviates this burden completely.  If your company outsources this work, Zlien is not only handling the paperwork burden of getting the notices and liens out of the door, but Zlien is also tracking deliveries and maintaining proof of delivery online in an organized database. If a company ever needs to prove they sent the notice (and they will!), Zlien will have the goods.

Zlien Operates Nationwide, And Can Help Wherever You Furnish Materials

The third challenge highlighted in Top 4 Mechanics Lien Law Challenges For Material Suppliers and Materialmen is that many material suppliers operate across state lines.  In the mechanics lien context, this presents two big problems:  (1) The law changes when you cross the border; and (2) You typically can’t use a single attorney or law firm in every state.

Law, unlike business, is extremely jurisdictional. Material suppliers not only need a system to manage the compliance issues that vary from state-to-state, but they need a partner in business who can help them everywhere, so there is one simple vendor to turn to when its time to send a preliminary notice or file a mechanics lien.  Zlien operates nationwide, and helps material suppliers across the nation navigation mechanics lien compliance issues.

Zlien Manages And Researches Project Information

The fourth and final challenge highlighted in Top 4 Mechanics Lien Law Challenges For Material Suppliers and Materialmen is that most material suppliers are without critical project information needed to file a lien or send a preliminary notice to owner.

As examples, material suppliers may not know the true identity of a property owner, the legal description of the property, or the surety who holds the payment bond on a project. The prime contractor typically has this information, and while subcontractors may not have it first hand, they’ll encounter the property owner or property owner representatives at the project while work, or at least be close enough to the project to have access to the information.

Material suppliers, though, just don’t have this access.  They typically send materials off without ever stepping foot on site. Unfortunately, the basic project information they don’t have is information they need.

Zlien helps companies manage and research this project information. When working with a material supplier, our services include researching the property owner and legal property description on private construction projects.  On state or federal projects, we research the contracting agency (public entity) and the surety holding bonds.  When the information can’t be found in research, Zlien will go on to make formal statutory requests for the information.  As a result, when its time to send a preliminary notice or file a mechanics lien, your company has the information it needs to protect its rights.

Learn more about Zlien’s service and how it can work for your company.

Every company has receivable problems, and everyone has an approach to these problems that seems ineffective.

Every company has receivable problems.  It doesn’t matter if your a tradesman, a material supplier, a design professional or equipment lessor, every now and again you provide your services and go unpaid.

You may or may not have debt collection procedures in place.  Perhaps you have an in-house staff member hound debtors with phone calls and certified letters.  Perhaps you have a debt threshold, when the problem is passed onto a collections agency, or a law firm. Whatever your procedures may be, these two facts are undoubtedly true:  (1) Collecting this money in or out of house costs you additional money; and (2) At the end of the year these unpaid bills add up and can be a substantial amount of bad debt.

I’ve talked about bad debt in the past here on the Construction Lien Blog.  In “Use Zlien and The Lien Laws to Reduce Your Bad Debt in 2012,” there is an entire section of that post dedicated to the “high costs of bad debt.”  Here is a quote:

Unpaid receivables even in small amounts can have a very significant impact on your company’s profitability.  Let’s say you have just $5,000 of unpaid receivables, and you have a net profit margin of 5%.  Your company will need to make $100,000 in revenue to compensate for the lost $5,000.  That’s a significant amount of money to offset the loss of such a small debt.  Now, think about $20,000 of unpaid receivables, $100,000, or more.  The impact to a company’s bottom line can be staggering.

The construction industry has access to mechanic lien or bond claim laws on nearly every project. These lien laws are super powerful, as they turn the project job site itself into collateral.  Just like a bank doesn’t loan money without getting collateral, if you pay attention to and preserve your lien rights, you too can have collateral every time you send out materials or perform other services on a construction project.

So, if lien protection is so great, why doesn’t every company do it on every project?

The answer, unfortunately, is because lien laws are extraordinarily complex and burdensome.

Laws are different state-to-state, and even within the same state your requirements will differ depending on the type of work you do, the character of the project, your tier on the project, the project’s value, and more. For companies who work on multiple projects each year, and especially those who work in multiple states, managing these requirements is impossible. Further, once the requirements are known, sending, filing and tracking all of the required notices and lien documents is a paperwork nightmare.

In consulting with companies across the country on lien compliance issues, I’ve learned that as a consequence of all these complexities, most comply simply disregard their lien rights. They usually take this “it’s more trouble than its worth” attitude after assigning the task of complying with the lien laws to a staff member, secretary, assistant, or even in-house legal counsel.

One cannot understate, however, just how complex the mechanic lien landscape is nationwide. It’s virtually impossible to comply, or train someone in-house to lead compliance.

One cannot understate, however, just how complex the mechanic lien landscape is nationwide. With or without lien and notice writing software, it’s virtually impossible to comply, or train someone in-house to lead compliance.  I’ve talked about this very phenomenon before in the post: 4 Reasons Why It’s Smart To Outsource Your Preliminary Notice Work.

While everyone has receivable problems, and lien laws are the best protection money can buy, because compliance with these laws is so complex companies typically forfeit their lien and bond claim rights. At the end of each year, these companies find themselves with a pile of bad debt and a history of collection costs and attorney fees, wondering if there is a better way.

You Need A Turnkey Mechanics Lien Solution

The answer to your bad debt headaches is to protect your mechanics lien and bond claim rights (see our posts about Why It’s Important To Lien and How A Mechanic Lien Gets You Paid). Since lien compliance is so complex, however, you need a turnkey mechanics lien solution.  Something that can completely take the lien process out of your company’s hands, and do everything: Monitor what must be filed and when, file and deliver required documents, track all filings, make collection efforts, and file lien enforcement actions.

In fact, you should make it a new year’s resolution to find such a turnkey service, because if you spend the entire year sending all required notices and protecting your mechanic lien rights, you’ll close out the 2012 calendar year with substantially less bad debt than 2011 and previous years.

And not to brag, but Zlien is the only company out there that offers such a complete turnkey solution to folks in the construction industry.  And we’re the only ones who can handle your mechanics lien compliance from soup to nuts – at an affordable rate – because we use proprietary front end and back end software to manage all of the lien law’s complexities.

If you’re ready to protect your lien rights on every project and stop losing money, contact us to learn how you can Lien Smart.

As the holiday season winds down and 2012 approaches, everyone in the construction industry is looking back on the fiscal successes and failures from 2011, and making plans for the new year. Many businesses will be staring at a mound of “bad debt,” which may be written off when tax time approaches this spring.  You may be wondering, what can I do to stop accumulating so much bad debt?  Let us help you plan for 2012.

The High Costs of Bad Debt?

Think you can just write off your bad debt?  It’s not quite that simple. While there are certainly deductions available to you under the tax code to accommodate some of your bad debt, it’s irresponsible for you to write off uncollected receivables year after year without analyzing its effect on your company’s bottom line.  Unpaid receivables even in small amounts can have a very significant impact on your company’s profitability.

Let’s say you have just $5,000 of unpaid receivables, and you have a net profit margin of 5%.  Your company will need to make $100,000 in revenue to compensate for the lost $5,000.  That’s a significant amount of money to offset the loss of such a small debt.  Now, think about $20,000 of unpaid receivables, $100,000, or more.  The impact to a company’s bottom line can be staggering.

Filing Mechanic Liens Will Get You Paid More Often

Many feel that filing a mechanics lien is too aggressive, or that it will risk impairing a relationship with a good customer. The fact remains, however, that it’s hands-down the best way for someone in the construction industry to reduce their bad debts.

A few months ago I wrote a White Paper titled: 5 Ways A Mechanics Lien Can Get You Paid.  To summarize that White Paper, mechanic liens have a host of consequences to a project, including freezing funds, eliminating the property owner’s ability to sell, refinance or transfer the property, securing your debt with the project’s property as collateral, and more.  When you file a mechanics lien properly and timely, an entire symphony of pressure points are pushed, and this results in getting you paid more often than not.

If you have any unpaid receivables at the end of 2011, a well-executed plan to protect and exercise your mechanic lien rights is your solution. You’ll see a huge difference in your bottom line.  To take advantage of the lien laws, however, you need to follow a lot of rules.  Here’s what you’ll need to know.

Part I:  Protect Your Lien Rights From The Start Of Work

In creating a mechanics lien plan, the first thing you need to know is that Filing A Lien Is A Discipline, And Not A Knee-Jerk Reaction. Namely, you have to begin protecting your lien rights by filing certain preliminary notices at the very beginning of every project.

I’ve discussed preliminary notices quite a bit on this blog (see Preliminary Notices category). The long and short of these discussions is that in many states, you’re required to deliver to certain parties a notice formally putting them on notice that you’re furnishing labor and/or materials to the project.  This notice is due within a certain amount of time from when you begin work, and if you miss your window to send the notice, you will forfeit your lien rights.  Ouch.

If you do three, four, five some-odd projects each year, sending the preliminary notice in-house is not going to be a big deal, although you’ll risk making a mistake.  However, for those companies who have a lot of preliminary notice filings each month or quarter, it’s probably a good idea to outsource this service.  Knowing when a notice is required is important, as is getting the notice prepared properly and sent timely.  Without it, the mechanics lien plan just won’t work.  Period.

Part II:  Exercise Your Lien Rights If Unpaid

So, you’ve filed your preliminary notices when required and protected your lien rights.  Things have been going well, but you’ve encountered a client who is not paying its invoice.  What now?

The next step is to exercise your lien rights by filing your mechanics lien. Like preliminary notices, this must be filed within a certain amount of time, which each state having different claim periods (Calculate Lien Deadlines with Zlien’s LienPilot).  Liens are typically filed after you’ve finished or stopped providing services, and after an amount of money has become due to you.

Be careful when filing your lien because there are lots of traps for the unwary.  In fact, you may be well served to use a service like Zlien, who will prepare, file and serve your mechanics lien for a flat fee. Once your mechanics lien is filed and served, you can then make additional attempts to collect the debt.

A lot of times, the filing of a mechanics lien alone will be enough to turn things around and get payment. If you remain unpaid, however, you’ll need to move to the final step, as the mechanic lien will not tie up the property forever.

Part III: Enforce Your Lien Rights With Suit

The idea behind a mechanics lien is that you’re constricting alteration of the property’s title in any way, so that if you’re debt is not paid you could theoretically call upon the sheriff to seize the property and sell it to pay off your debt.  If the filing of the lien alone does not produce payment, you will want to begin taking steps to enforce your lien and requesting the property’s acquisition and sale.

This request is done through an ordinary lawsuit filed against the property owner (and frequently also the prime contractor and party who hired you). You’ll be required to prove that your debt is owed, and if you prevail at trail and get a judgment, the judgment would request the sheriff to proceed to foreclose on the project’s property.

This is a long road and most liens get resolved before going this far…but, you must take those first steps in the journey and understand the procedure to most effectively use your lien rights.

A Guarantee

When account receivables are at issue, it’s hard to guarantee anything.  However, in my experience of helping suppliers and contractors around the country implement quality credit policies and mechanic lien plans, I can guarantee you that a well-planned and executed mechanics lien plan will nearly eliminate your bad debts in 2012 and beyond.

When thinking about a mechanics lien plan, understand that implementing it in-house will be very, very difficult.  There are so many state requirements which differ depending on your tier in the project, the project type, and other variables.  Keeping up with these changes and differences is impossible if you’re not in the business of doing it. Therefore, again, your best option is to outsource this stuff.  And that’s a positive thing, because it means you can implement a mechanics lien plan, turn around your bad debt situation, and not create additional work for your business.

Please take note that our offices will be closed on Friday December 23rd and Monday December 26th to celebrate the season.  Orders placed during that time will be processed the following business day.

Please also take note that we’ll be doing some server work during this time.  The server work is actually beginning today, December 22nd.  You may notice slow server response, difficulty logging into the site, inability to place orders, and even a little bit of server downtime.  We’re upgrading our server space and systems to prepare for a booming 2012!

Best wishes to everyone for a great holiday weekend.

Scott & the Zlien Team

The year 2011 is drawing to a close and it’s been another turbulent year for the construction industry; an industry that has taken quite a beating by the US economic recession. However, on this day we all take pause to give thanks for our fortunes. We’ll take the day off from work to be with family, and appreciate those things that matter most.

This year, I think we all really have a lot to be thankful for. While the US Economy has had a rough going, things are getting better, and there’s hope for those in construction as we look forward to 2012. Plus, when you compare our living condition with the rest of the world, our recession woes are still more bountiful than the best days of some less fortunate around the world.

Here at Zlien, we have a lot to be thankful for in 2011.  On a personal front, two of us on the Zlien team have become parents for the first time, and so we’ll be celebrating this holiday for the first time with our new families.  On a professional front, our company has seen a lot of growth in 2011, and has formed great relationships with new and old clients.

I appreciate you as a reader, and for those of you who are clients of Zlien, we really appreciate your continued trust and your business, and wish all of you a Happy Thanksgiving!

While the lien laws are complex (as evidenced by the content here), it’s not that hard to file a mechanics lien. In fact, with our Zlien service, you can submit your claim within a few minutes, and your lien will be processed immediately and recorded within a matter of days.  Zlien also offers a rush service that, when used, guarantees that your lien will be sent for recording within just 24 hours.  When we say you can lien it now with Zlien, we mean what we say.

None of Zlien’s competition does it any faster, or more competently.

Zlien has patents pending on its innovative technology that makes ordering mechanics liens fast and accurate, and then follows through the lien process to calculate lien and lawsuit deadlines. When you team with Zlien to file your preliminary notices, mechanics liens or bond claims, you are teaming with the most competent group out there, and a group that will guide you through the complex maze of lien laws.