Word: legalism
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Unlike similar legal fields such as bankruptcy, foreclosure is rarely a full-time practice and is often handled by real estate attorneys or legal-aid-services agencies. Still, more than 3 million property foreclosures were filed in the U.S. last year; South Florida is expected to see more than 150,000 this year, compared to fewer than 25,000 three years ago. And while mortgage modifications had been on the upswing in recent months, the Boston-based National Consumer Law Center reported this week that many large banks and other mortgage servicers have decided it's cheaper to foreclose than...
Home foreclosure isn't a legal abstraction for Yolanda Paschal, a recent graduate of the University of Miami School of Law. Her parents are facing foreclosure on the Miami house she grew up in. They're luckier than others, since they have another home to fall back on, but the experience has convinced Paschal how acute the crisis is in Florida, which now has the nation's highest mortgage foreclosure rate, at 17%. "I'm part of this community," says Paschal, 25. "I can't escape how deeply this is affecting not just my neighbors but me as well...
Paschal plans to practice business litigation next fall once she joins the firm that hired her. In the meantime, she will put her legal education to use for South Floridians like her family thanks to a $10,000 foreclosure-defense fellowship she received from the UM law school. The innovative new grant program has sent out eight recent grads this month to help local residents navigate one of the law's most labyrinthine arenas. (See pictures of Cleveland's struggle with the housing crisis...
That specter of judicial paralysis helped spur UM law professor Michael Froomkin to create the foreclosure-defense program. It places fledgling attorneys like Paschal with legal-aid-service organizations to help tackle the backlog of cases - more than 50,000 foreclosure filings so far this year in Miami-Dade County alone. Many homeowners don't know what legal defenses are available to them as they battle lenders to keep their properties - or at least make foreclosure less painful and less costly. "Potentially, one of the most significant [defenses] is that the lender, because so many home loans were securitized during...
Carolina Lombardi, a senior attorney at Legal Services of Greater Miami Inc., which is mentoring some of the UM fellows, says foreclosure defendants also need attorneys to help them fend off all-too-frequent lender practices like exorbitant escrow claims. "Homeowners who have lawyers are usually prevailing in those cases," says Lombardi. But she notes that unless homeowners fall below the federal poverty line ($22,000 for a family of four), they can't qualify for the free legal aid that agencies like hers provide. That creates an obstacle for most foreclosure defendants, who aren't impoverished but because...