My brother-in-law, an attorney, calls them "nastygrams".
The defense offered by these lawyers is piss poor. They don't even bother to refute the central allegation that Kerry's wound was self-inflicted. The book already has counterpoints to everything they say in the letter--read it.
Does your brother-in-law beleive people should be scared of and comply with nasty-grams?
"My brother-in-law, an attorney, calls them "nastygrams"."
I get to send nastygrams to a certain lawyer who is cheating my mother out of investment retirement money. After my flame skills have been honed for years on Freerepublic, you can imagine what kind of scorchers my nastygrams are :)
I've heard it opined that one should never threaten to sue, one should sue and threaten not to drop it.