Recent Law School Grads Recruited By Foreclosure Mills Attract Cloud Of Suspicion For Roles In Alleged Widespread Document Manufacturing Racket

The Palm Beach Post reports:

• Recently out of law school and looking for work, scores of young Florida attorneys found steady paychecks in burgeoning firms whose business is based on repossessing the American dream. Today, more than 260 attorneys work at four of Florida's largest foreclosure firms, and 48 percent of them have been practicing law for less than three years, according to Florida Bar records obtained by The Palm Beach Post.

• Of 156 attorneys who started the year churning out foreclosures at the massive Plantation-based operation of David J. Stern but have since left or been laid off, half had been practicing law for less than four years.

• With this fall's allegations of forged foreclosure documents, fraudulent notarizations and questionable affidavits submitted in tens of thousands of foreclosure cases, those nascent lawyers are now under a cloud of suspicion.

• Some may face Florida Bar investigations that could end their careers, while homeowner advocates wonder whether the foreclosure crisis would have reached its state of disorder if it weren't for legions of novice lawyers doing the legwork.

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• Lack of experience could have led young lawyers to follow their employer's lead, unaware they may be committing an offense, said Matt Weidner, an outspoken St. Petersburg foreclosure defense attorney, who nonetheless believes lawyers share a large portion of blame in the foreclosure fracas. "The attorneys are the key; they played an essential, critical role in all of this," Weidner said. "But I know the younger attorneys had no idea what they were doing."(1)

For more, see Novice Florida lawyers draw suspicion in foreclosure mess (Nearly half of those working at the state's four largest foreclosure firms have practiced law for less than three years).

(1) Recent law school graduates appear to make for handy, but regrettably vulnerable dupes in perpetuating the alleged rackets by foreclosure mills, particularly if the recent grad is 'ball & chained' with big student loan payments for the debt that financed his/her education and can't otherwise find employment in a more respectable area of the legal profession.