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You have likely heard the old joke that lab rats are being replaced by lawyers because the lab workers do not get emotionally attached to lawyers.  Or the one about a thousand lawyers being chained together at the bottom of the ocean being a “good start”.  As these jokes (and the hundreds of others) show, lawyers have a bad reputation.  Personally, I have never had the need for one and only know a few, and I have worked pretty hard at maintaining the status quo on both of those points.  It seemed to me that lawyers are for people who live near secret toxic waste dumpsites. 

Recently, my work helping small businesses with marketing led me to a local Law Firm and Real Estate company where I’ve learned several things (including the fact that there is such a thing as a combination Law Firm/Real Estate company, and that combining those services is a huge benefit to their clients- more on that later). 

The people I met there are well aware of the reputation Lawyers have; working with them I quickly picked up on the company jargon that “nobody likes a lawyer until they need one”.  With the recent happenings in the Real Estate market, there’s not a whole lot of popularity on that front, either.  I have always advocated integrity and personal responsibility, which I feared would not mesh well in a Law Office.  I kept these thoughts to myself and focused on my responsibilities, to build awareness of their services and to market a loan modification program.

Surprisingly, I discovered a deep seeded passion in the Attorney and his staff.  Ted Greene, the owner and Attorney, is an affable but direct communicator.  In one intense conversation with Ted four days into my work he stopped me and said, “You don’t talk to these people.  You don’t understand the fear and hopelessness that these people feel.  They want assurance, they want an advocate, to speak with an Attorney who knows the law.”   I was taken aback and humbled at his perspective and his passion for the distressed home owners that his company had been serving.  Integrity and responsibility in a Law office?  The list of things I was learning continued to grow.        

Every day that I work with the law office I encounter another story of distressed home owners in desperate need of help.  These stories have forced me to re-examine another long-held belief.  I consider myself to be a savvy consumer and I’ve long followed conventional consumer wisdom, which made me wonder:  Why do these people think they need us?  Everybody should know that they can do their own loan modification.  Call your bank, fill out some paperwork, and get a loan mod.  Anybody who has taken in an afternoon of Clark Howard could tell you that.  Besides, the larger banks are receiving government money to help us all out of this mess and it only stands to reason that they’d rather agree to a lower house payment that can be paid every month than get nothing, right?  Somehow this has proved not to be the case for many people.  My conventional wisdom is not serving me well. 

The clients at UpsideDownCA.com, the joint venture of Ted Greene Law Offices and JCL Realty, are not lazy people who can’t fill out forms.  They have tried all of the options available to them and they have nowhere left to turn.  Many are home owners who have already been denied their modifications.  Some have come home to trustee sale notices posted on their front door after never hearing from their lenders.  Others have had their paperwork lost by the bank or have received rejections despite overwhelming hardships.  All of these customers received reprieve through the services of UpsideDownCA. 

Working with this team has been an incredible experience- fulfilling, even, to earn a living while helping people who are saving their homes.  They might not be doing the work that is typically thought of as community service, like feeding the hungry or giving toys to needy kids.  No movies will be made featuring the team at UpsideDownCA.com.  Still, I do think that this team is doing some pretty heroic work.  There are dozens of families who will go to bed tonight in their house because UpsideDownCA went to bat for them.  It feels good to be a part of that.

I’ve also been thinking about the lenders who are refusing service to the under-employed, the furloughed State workers, and the suddenly single-income households.  I believe that they are doing our society an extreme disservice, and I’m not alone in noticing.  People have a long memory for companies who turned a blind eye to the needs of their customers.  Maybe it’ll be the bankers offered up for lab experiments in the coming days.  Lest the employees of these companies wish to become the butt of longstanding jokes, I hope they take heed and change their tune. 

And remember- you never know.  Next time you meet a lawyer, they may turn out to be one of the good guys.  

* Photo from above - “Furlough Friday” – 12:30pm – taken by Josh Bruno at the corner of 5th Street & Q Street just a few blocks from the Law Offices of Ted Greene.