Bankruptcy

Assembly Line Foreclosures?

By Scott Riddle

I previously posted about the US Trustee's action against Countrywide for alleged abuses in Chapter 13 cases.  From the Wall Street Journal Law Blog -

Does flat-fee pricing foster assembly-line lawyering?

That’s what U.S. bankruptcy judge Jeff Bohm suggested in a decision, entered yesterday, in a consumer bankruptcy case involving Countrywide and a Texas homeowner. While Judge Bohm declined to enter sanctions against Countrywide and its lawyers from two firms — Barrett Burke and McCalla Raymer — he wrote: “This fixed-fee business model appears to have been an overwhelming financial success. . . . Meanwhile, the profession has suffered from the ever decreasing standards that firms like Barrett Burke and McCalla Raymer have heretofore promoted. This demise must stop.”  ...

These law firms aren’t the only ones that have hit speed bumps in the foreclosure crisis. Law blog colleague Amir Efrati did this story on so-called “foreclosure mills.” He quotes a lawyer who says that while most firms who handle these cases for lenders in general do a good job, in the “gold rush” to get a piece of the growing business, some firms “have cut corners.”

Full post as published by Georgia Bankruptcy Blog on March 06, 2008 (boomark / email).