Baltimore Non-Profit Waging Battle Against Foreclosures, Mortgage Rescue Scams

The Baltimore Sun reports:

• The attorneys in the modest office on Fayette Street are continually busy, never mind that clients find them only by word-of-mouth. They've got a service that few offer but many want: legal help for homeowners in foreclosure. [...] A foreclosure case for the borrower, [...] can look like a recipe for unbillable hours [for the homeowner's attorney] with dim hope of success. Little money from the cash-strapped clients. Little time allowed by the state's foreclosure law to prepare a case before auction. Little chance of winning.

• Civil Justice is trying to change that. It's suggesting changes in state law. It's advising private-practice attorneys who want to help homeowners. And it's litigating wrongful-foreclosure cases it thinks could in one fell swoop save homeowners' investments, pave the way for lawsuits and show attorneys how foreclosure cases can be won - profitably.

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• Anticipating a flood of new pleas for help, Civil Justice wants to get more attorneys trained to take cases. It's organizing classes across the state. That's the way Civil Justice can make a bigger impact, [executive director Phillip R.] Robinson says, because it can never handle the cases of all the desperate homeowners who come calling. "We're pretty maxed out," he said.

For more, see Waging the fight for homeowners (Tiny nonprofit challenges foreclosures).

Go here for earlier posts on Civil Justice.