Lenders Face Difficulties In Scramble To Find Qualified Attorneys Willing To Pick Up Dumped South Florida Foreclosure Mill's Caseload

In Plantation, Florida, the Daily Business Review reports:

• As the one-time largest plaintiffs foreclosure law firm in Florida, the Law Offices of David J. Stern at its peak handled 20 percent of all foreclosures in the state, processing more than 70,000 foreclosure cases on behalf of major lenders like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase in 2009.

• Now that the Plantation law firm has been dropped by a number of lenders and servicers including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, ex-clients are scrambling to find law firms and lawyers to fill the void.

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• But the replacement law firms haven't found it easy to find enough qualified law firms to take the work, and the transition has slowed a system already clogged with overwhelming numbers of cases. Some judges are not willing to delay cases due to the change in attorneys as Stern files are turned over to new lawyers.(1) More and more counties are requiring in-person rather than telephonic hearings.

For more, see Lenders, Servicers Scramble to Shift Foreclosure Cases to New Firms (The head of one coverage attorney service has been swamped with requests but says there's a shortage of qualified attorneys).

(1) Reportedly, transitioning cases from Stern's firm to others has not been seamless, judging by one hearing. According to the story, some banks have assigned their main counsel as transition firms to farm out the work. That is the case with CitiMortgage, which handed Akerman Senterfitt 30,000 residential foreclosure files. According to a Nov. 23 hearing transcript obtained by the Daily Business Review, Edmund Whitson III, a Tampa-based Akerman attorney, pleaded with a Punta Gorda judge for a postponement on a 2-year-old foreclosure case, and the judge wasn't happy.