One of the things I am committed to doing as an Oklahoma attorney is staying up-to-date on the law and the different remedies available to Oklahoma consumers. To do that, I spend many days each year attending local and national legal seminars where I learn from the best and the brightest legal minds from all across the nation.
Last Friday, I got up very early and drove to Oklahoma City for an all-day legal seminar called “Defending Foreclosures in Oklahoma” which was jointly sponsored by the Oklahoma Bar Association and Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma.
The seminar’s speaker was fellow NACBA member and Jacksonville, Florida legal aid attorney April Charney. Over the past ten years, she’s waged a battle against foreclosures and in the process became a nationally recognized expert, a superstar among her peers, feared by mortgage lenders and loved by desperate homeowners.
On an aside, April worked for legal aid in Fayetteville, Arkansas at the same time that I was a college student at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, so we had an enjoyable conversation about the Razorbacks and our days spent in northwest Arkansas.
Ms. Charney is on a mission to train an army of foreclosure defense lawyers across the nation to protect millions of Americans from illegal foreclosures. Since 2007, she has conducted seminars from coast-to-coast and trained thousands of lawyers in the process.
“Lawyers don’t go to law school to fight foreclosures,” she said. “It’s a special skill set. Even most judges aren’t familiar enough with this because so few homeowners go into court.”
Ms. Charney said her crusade was born out of experience. Over and over again, she said, in her cases and those of other attorneys she met, she found sloppiness, deception, and outright fraud – including forged signatures – in the nation’s mortgage lending industry. Regardless of why her clients have been unable to pay their mortgages, she maintains that nobody deserves to lose a home to the unethical and illegal foreclosure procedures that she claims are now being used by many banks, mortgage companies and loan servicers.
Also in the crowd were a number of Oklahoma attorneys who are personal friends of mine even though they represent “the dark side” i.e. the banks, mortgage companies and loan services. They were there to keep an eye on the opposition. They were putting into practice what Sun Tzu, that famous Chinese general and military strategist said: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”
You’ve probably heard the saying “it was like trying to drink from a firehose.” That’s what this seminar was like. Deep, thick, and difficult to understand ideas and processes. At the beginning of the seminar, Ms. Charney herself warned “This is very dense, complicated work. “If you don’t get it, raise your hand and ask questions because the chances are others don’t get it either.”
Some of the topics that we covered in the 8 hours we were together include:
- How the mortgage industry operates, including securitization, trusts, and residential mortgage-backed securities;
- Understanding loan documents, origination, and the closing process;
- Servicing problems and post origination issues;
- Common law/state law causes of action and affirmative defenses;
- Drafting discovery/motion practice;
- Federal laws that govern mortgage origination and servicing;
- Post-origination issues, including attorneys’ fees;
- Role of bankruptcy and foreclosure.
Ms. Charney receives no money for these seminars and insists that all participants donate 20 hours of pro bono (free) work to their local legal aid organization. This will help me accomplish one of my New Year’s resolutions of increasing my charitable legal work.
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