The University of Miami School of Law is pleased to announce the availability of a number of Foreclosure Defense Fellowships for May 2009 UM Law graduates who become members of the Florida Bar. Our goal is to provide meaningful and fulfilling post-graduate alternatives while helping local residents caught in the foreclosure crisis. In addition to the honor of being selected, participants will acquire real-world work experience, have the satisfaction of helping address a serious need in our community, and still have some free time to look for longer-term employment.
Winners of these Fellowships will receive a limited grant totaling $10,000, paid in monthly installments, in exchange for a commitment to (1) attend a three or four day training session in late September, and then (2) work at least three days a week for 27 weeks with either Dade Legal Services or Broward Legal Aid, commencing as soon as you are admitted to the Florida Bar.
Further details are available on the application form at http://www.law.miami.edu/4close/application.pdf.
This announcement, which I just sent to all of our recent graduates, represents a milestone in a project I’ve been working on for some time: trying to get one problem (the lousy market for law graduates) to help solve another (South Florida’s foreclosure crisis).
The need is great.
South Florida is ground zero for the national foreclosure crisis. The courts and the legal system are overwhelmed by this legal tsunami. In all of 2006, fewer than 10,000 foreclosures were filed in the Miami-Dade courts. In the first month of 2009, more than 6,000 foreclosures were filed in those same courts — more than half the annual number 3 years ago — and the rate of foreclosure filings has increased since then. Last year 56,656 foreclosures were filed in Miami-Dade County alone. This year we are on track to double that number. Although hard figures are difficult to come by, it is estimated that almost a third of these local foreclosure cases involve owner-occupied homestead property (“residential homestead mortgage foreclosures”), and that a very large fraction of the borrowers in those cases are unrepresented.
This is an unprecedented legal crisis for our community. As the Daily Business Review recently put it, “thousands of families are being displaced. Some end up on the streets or in shelters.”
The program I have created, with the help and strong support of Interim Dean Paul Verkuil and several other members of the UM faculty and administration, is only a beginning, and very much in need of funding support. I and others will be working during the summer to try to raise money for it, and also for an expanded version that would place our graduates in law offices where they would work as solo pro bono practitioners under the helpful eye of experienced lawyer-mentors. If you know anyone with a quarter of a million dollars, or even the odd thousand, who would like to help in this important work, please send them my way.
And if you are a Miami 3L looking for a job, but cannot find one, please consider this chance to do good and learn from top lawyers at the same time. I think the opportunity, while not very remunerative in dollars, will pay off in the satisfaction of doing good, in learning lawyering skills, and might just impress your next employer.
(In a further attempt to help struggling members of our community, the UM School of Law will also be offering a limited number of substantial scholarships to qualifying students who apply to the LL.M. in Real Property Development and agree to do 15 hours per week of supervised pro bono foreclosure defense representation. Participants in this program do not need to be members of the Florida Bar. Applicants for LL.M scholarships must complete both the regular application for the LL.M in Real Property Development and also a special scholarship application available from the LL.M in Real Property office.)
In the extended part of this post, I’ve put the (slightly reformatted) text of the Foreclosure Defense Fellowships application form.
