You can write a cease and desist letter yourself. No law in New York requires a lawyer and no court has to approve it. This guide explains what every line of a cease and desist letter is doing, walks through an annotated example, and then tells you plainly when a letter from you is enough and when it isn't.
Every effective cease and desist letter in New York has the same seven parts, in this order: the delivery line, the recipient, a subject line naming the conduct, the exact statement or conduct with its date and place, one sentence on why it is false or unlawful, three specific demands with a deadline, and a preservation notice with a reservation of rights. Below is what each part is doing, and why the ones people skip are the ones that matter.
The delivery line. Certified mail with return receipt gives you a green card (or a tracking record) proving the letter arrived on a date. Email gets there faster. Send both. The whole value of a cease and desist is notice, that after this date, the other person knew, and notice you can't prove is notice that didn't happen.
The exact words. This is the line people get wrong. "You've been saying terrible things about me" is not actionable; "you posted on March 3 that I stole money from clients" is. Quote the statement verbatim, give the date, give the place. If it's online, give the URL. If it was spoken, name who heard it. A letter that can't identify the statement tells the reader you can't identify it in court either.
Why it's false. One sentence, with the proof if you have it. Don't argue; state. You are not trying to win the debate in the letter. You are building the record that you told them the truth and they kept going.
The three demands. Delete, stop, confirm. Specific conduct with a deadline. A letter that demands "an apology" or "that you make this right" gives the recipient nothing concrete to comply with, and nothing concrete to be in breach of.
The preservation paragraph. This is the line that makes a recipient's lawyer sit up. It puts them on notice that deleting messages or accounts to cover their tracks is now a problem of its own. It costs you nothing to include.
The reservation of rights. Boilerplate, but it closes the door on the argument that by sending a letter and waiting, you gave something up.
Suppose a former business partner posts in a neighborhood Facebook group that you "ran off with the company's money and are about to be indicted." Under New York law, a false accusation of a serious crime is defamation per se, damages are presumed, so you don't have to prove you lost a dollar. Your letter quotes the post verbatim with the date and the group's name, states that no money was taken and no charge exists, demands deletion and a written retraction within five days, and directs them to preserve their Facebook data. You send it by mail and by Messenger. Day one, they've been told. Day six, if the post is still up, you have Exhibit A: they were told, in writing, it was false, and they chose to keep publishing.
It can't force anything. Neither can an attorney's letter, a cease and desist is not a court order, and this guide would be lying to you if it said otherwise. What changes with a signature of counsel is who the reader thinks is on the other end. A template from you reads as a complaint from an angry person. A letter on law-firm letterhead, citing the statute that presumes your damages and demanding evidence preservation, reads as the first page of a lawsuit, because that is what it is. Recipients, and their lawyers, treat the two very differently.
There is a second thing a lawyer does before the letter ever goes out: decide whether it should. New York's anti-SLAPP law (Civil Rights Law § 76-a) protects speech on matters of public interest, and a genuine negative review, an honest opinion, or commentary on a public controversy is not defamation no matter how much it stings. Send a cease and desist over protected speech and you can end up paying the other side's legal fees under § 70-a. The screening is the part of the service that protects you from yourself.
If the dispute is small and the person is reasonable, a short letter of your own, built on the parts above, sometimes works. If they ignore it, or if the statements are serious, an accusation of crime, of professional misconduct, of sexual misconduct, the next rung is an attorney-signed defamation cease and desist ($499 flat): screened first, drafted with the statute, signed by a New York attorney, mailed and emailed within 48 hours, with a proposed retraction the speaker can sign. For unwanted contact rather than false statements, the harassment cease and desist ($349) is the right tool; for your photo in someone's advertising, the stolen photos letter ($349).
No. It is private correspondence, not a court paper. Sign it, date it, and send it in a way you can prove, certified mail with return receipt, plus email.
You can, and it's often what gets read first. But a certified-mail receipt is much harder to dispute than a claim that an email was never seen. Send both.
Five to ten days is typical. Long enough to be reasonable, short enough that the deadline means something. For an online post that is still spreading, five days.
Don't answer in anger and don't delete anything. A response means they engaged. If the reply comes from a lawyer, that is the point to get your own, a short attorney review of their letter is included free with every DemandLetterNY letter.
Sometimes, for a small business with no lawyer. Larger businesses route everything to counsel, and counsel weighs a letter by who signed it. That is the situation the attorney-signed version exists for.