Your Pitch to a Prospective Lawyer

Aug 19, 2019

I keep receiving the same question about finding a lawyer. People are seeking lawyers that have come to the same conclusions that I have written about on these pages. There are very few of them. A common question is whether I can recommend the lawyer that shares my philosophy. Here is my answer:

The first thing to remember is that I don’t deal in philosophy. My philosophy is the pursuit of justice. It’s also the pursuit of truth. I know that sounds corny, but that’s all I’m about. Most attorneys share my philosophy contrary to what you have indicated. But it is also true that most attorneys lack the time or motivation to do the research on this very complicated area of litigation. Therefore they apply legal standards that can and do lead to erroneous conclusions.

Convincing a lawyer is the same as convincing a judge. You start with the fact that what you are saying is counter-intuitive. The lawyer and the judge both believe they already know what is happening. Somebody is suing in foreclosure in order to create restitution for an unpaid debt. Convincing them otherwise requires careful research, analysis and preparation for a very persuasive presentation.

So if you’re looking for a lawyer that already knows what I know and who has already done the research, analysis and preparation for court, and who has won in court based on the essential premise that the party claiming foreclosure had no right to do so, you are not going to find many people. It’s not fair but it is a fact. Instead of looking for that you should be looking for a lawyer who is open-minded enough to join a telephone conference with me where I explain how I have won these cases.

Your pitch to the prospective lawyer should not be whether they agree with me, but rather whether they are open to being convinced by me in the same way that I have convinced judges in hundreds of cases. Lawyers don’t like to lose cases. Your job and mine is to convince them that they will win and to give them the motivation and tools to do so. Let the prospective lawyer sit in judgment on your case with the bias that you are trying to get out of a legitimate debt and to get a free house.

The lawyer, like any judge, will resist the possibility of a defense that results in a windfall to a homeowner. And it is probably true that neither the lawyer or any judge will fully accept the notion that in today’s judicial context, the windfalls are all going to participants in illegal foreclosures sought in the pursuit of money for revenue and not money to pay a debt. For most lawyers and judges, that is a bridge too far. They just can’t see how that could be true. It’s only if you happen to get a judge or a lawyer who has a background of investment banking that they will understand how that is possible.

Lawyers and judges are just people like you and me. They come to your case and view it through the lens of their own history, experiences and training. In that context it is safe to say that they would rather see an outcome rewarding the players initiating a foreclosure than allow a borrower to end up on the winning side of the dispute, even if that means that the parties involved in making the claim have misbehaved and are using fabricated documents that have been forged, backdated and robosigned.

I’m telling you this not because I think your task is Mission impossible but rather to give you are realistic view of the uphill climb involved in persuading a lawyer, a judge or just another human being that you are on solid ground – legally, ethically and morally.

It can be done and I’ve done it. But to be honest, in all cases where I have been successful, the judge was ruling on the basis of deficiencies in the proof of the prima facie case for the party named as claiming the foreclosure. The judge may have ruled that way because he or she was convinced that the wrong party had brought suit. But they certainly were not embracing the notion that there was no claim on the debt because there was no existing creditor.

So the general strategy is to shoot for the stars and accept a landing on the moon.