Word: lawing
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...fighting kites is symbolic. The multiplicity of explosive Afghan factions, competing interests and networks remain so complex and hazardous that honest students of the country's recent history are eager to point out the limits of their own knowledge. It is all daunting. As John Dempsey, Senior Rule of Law Advisor for the United States Institute of Peace, says, "there are things I still find confusing about this place, and I've been here seven years." (Read a story about Khaled Hosseini, the author of The Kite Runner...
...those numbers don't draw more attorneys into foreclosure law, if only as a short-term specialty until the crisis subsides, homeowner advocates hope it will at least motivate some of them to shift more of their pro bono work in that direction. In hard-hit counties like Miami-Dade, bar associations are responding by holding foreclosure-defense clinics for local lawyers. Otherwise, the fear is that far more people than necessary stand to lose homes, possibly slowing economic recovery and clogging a civil-court system already ravaged by states' budget cuts. (See a video of people facing foreclosure...
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...
Another impediment is foreclosure law itself, a bureaucratically convoluted field worthy of a Dickens novel. "It's a labor-intensive area of practice," says Paschal. "It involves a ton of paperwork." Yet another is the relatively low pay attorneys usually reap from defending foreclosure clients. Melanca Clark, counsel at the Brennan Center and co-author of this month's study, urges Congress and state legislatures to create incentives, like more funding for foreclosure legal representation, that "level the playing field" against lenders and their comparatively well-paid lawyers. Restrictions on government funding for legal services should be relaxed, she says...
...Still, law schools like Miami's may be one of the best untapped sources. Other programs, like Yale Law School's ROOF Project, also send students into local communities to aid foreclosure cases, but UM's is one of the first to create a paid fellowship. It also makes sense, says Paschal, since so many law firms today are trimming costs by delaying the start date for new hires by a year or more. That gives law grads time to pursue this kind of work - whose complexity, Paschal adds, is ideal for cutting young legal teeth. Says Froomkin...