Laid-Off Lawyer Finds New Purpose In Pro Bono Foreclosure Work

At 55, Cheryl Jacobs works 70 hours a week -- and bills next to none.

A lawyer of 25 years, Jacobs was retrenched from her job as a mass tort lawyer in 2008 and seriously considered dropping her legal career altogether.

But there was one part of her life she couldn't let go of: the pro bono cases she had picked up under the Philadelphia Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Diversion Program, a seminal mediation program whereby lender and homeowner are forced to meet face to face for mediation before a home can be foreclosed on.

With more time to kill after her former firm's layoffs, Jacobs took on more cases.

"I was handing several cases and I guess because of my own ego, I thought I was the best person to finish them," she recalls.

Since then Jacobs has worked on nearly 50 foreclosure cases to date -- no easy task given each one can last several years and involve multiple hours-long court appearances. In one of her biggest success stories, Jacobs helped a sight-impaired victim of predatory lending modify her $28,000 mortgage to $9,000, and more recently, down to zero.

In January, Jacobs started the Cheryl Jacobs Law Group dedicated to helping people stay in their homes. She works on most of those cases for free.

"I charge my clients very little or nothing at all," she says. "They can't afford to pay me. If you can't afford your mortgage, you probably can't afford a lawyer."

Although Jacobs, who is divorced and has a daughter, is working harder and making less money than ever before, she has never felt happier.

"Why do I do this? When the mediation works, when I know I've kept somebody in their homes, the feeling is so amazing," she says. "I know how I'd feel if someone was in danger of losing my home and someone helped me stay in it."

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Comments

[cragusa]

01:25 AM on 09/29/2010

First the PR guy... are all these people just trying to get into heaven now????

[Anthony Dodd]

07:34 PM on 09/23/2010

I like Sonny Bono and U2's Bono. WIN/WIN

[zuzuzpetals]

03:45 PM on 09/23/2010

Beautiful person who has discovered the secret of happiness.

[LouGots]

03:44 PM on 09/23/2010

Very laudable; consistent with the best traditions of the profession, provided that the pro bono clients have meritorious defenses to forclosure. Asserting unmeritorious defenses, defenses not based in facts or law, but which are merely delaying tactics, is ethically questionable, to say the least..

[Steve1]

03:26 PM on 09/23/2010

Now this is a great story! We need more like these to bring people together and understand not everyone is a Tea Bagger/Palinite.

[OldTulsan]

12:04 PM on 09/23/2010

Ms. Jacobs is an example of an important principle:

Helping other people helps a person to forget their own problems.

Here's some people who have overcome their problems to be blessings to others:

o Jessica Cox, born without arms and yet pilots a plane:

http://rightfooted.com/
Right Footed

o Nick Vujicic, born without arms or legs, and is now minister:

http://www.lifewithoutlimbs.org/
Life Without Limbs :: Nick Vujicic

[Cowpunk]

03:00 AM on 09/23/2010

I just love Arianna's answer to the jobs crisis:

Voluntary slavery!

Let's see more.

[curtisraymond]

08:05 AM on 09/23/2010

This was such a good, heart warming story with stupidest comment ever.

[booboo111]

02:55 PM on 09/23/2010

How's this; Pro Bono. Who DOESN'T like Bono?

[falsy]

10:48 PM on 09/22/2010

I think what she's doing is fantastic, but I'm still not sure how she's paying her bills. As a fellow unemployed lawyer, I'd love to do what she's doing but I can't afford to with student loans. I can't even afford a course to learn that area of the law.

[Ralph Noyes]

07:57 PM on 09/22/2010

Whether there is money to be made from it or not, this society is now such that every honorable lawyer should strive to throw wrenches and boots into the gears of oppression.

Any way that we can sabotage the system and hurt the banks and the mega-wealthy, JUST DO IT.

[KDog76A]

12:33 PM on 09/23/2010

honorable lawyer..... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

How do you think the mega-wealthy get rich?????!!!!!????? Lawyers.

Yeah hurting the banks is a lofty goal. Considering without banks, you wouldn't have money, period... no place to cash your paycheck, no investors to buy shares in your employers business, nobody to loan to farmers who put the food on your table.

Just do it!!!! Lets see how much further we can drive this country into the ground for the sake of progressive/conservative special interests at the expense of the average citizen.

[anothervoice2]

03:25 PM on 09/23/2010

"Without banks, you wouldn't have money, period"?!!!

More like:
"Without the taxpayer-funded 700B bailout, there wouldn't be banks, period"!

[breakingpoint]

07:40 PM on 09/22/2010

help support educate
http://financialterrorists.org

[The Albany Kid]

06:01 PM on 09/22/2010

Brava, Ms. Jacobs!

[nonamejustgame]

05:27 PM on 09/22/2010

Bravo!

[Newsjunqee]

04:54 PM on 09/22/2010

This woman is a role model who, with others like her, must be remembered for posterity.

Ms. Jacobs is proof positive that the predatory corporations together with our inept and impotent government have not destroyed the public spirit.

I would love to see her run for office. People like Ms. Jacobs are the only ones deserving of a public mandate.

[OldTulsan]

07:29 PM on 09/22/2010

There are some exceptional CEOs...

Rick Arquilla, President and COO of Roto-Rooter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8FuiCdayk8
YouTube - Undercover Boss "Roto Rooter Sums it Up"

Aaron Feuerstein

http://www.bizspirit.com/spkrfullbio/bus/08_FeuersteinAaron.html
The International Conference on Business and Consciousness

"Aaron Feuerstein

the third-generation president and CEO of Malden Mills, producer of the revolutionary fabric, Polartec. When a fire ravaged much of his textile factory, Feuerstein became the symbol of a socially responsible business owner who rules by his conscience. Despite overwhelming pressure to resume operations overseas, Feuerstein instead pledged to rebuild the mill at home and pay his employees during the three-month reconstruction..."

Ross Perot, former CEO of EDS, who personally led a rescue mission to free EDS employees being held hostage in Iran.

He tried to warn us about "free" trade:

http://www.youtube.com/v/EHSnXFEzE4E&hl=en_US&fs=1&
Perot on NAFTA

[KDog76A]

12:36 PM on 09/23/2010

I agree with your first to paragraphs, but doing charitable work doesn't necessarily make you a good leader in public office.

And for your satisfaction, there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans like her.

[Newsjunqee]

03:47 PM on 09/23/2010

Agreed. However, a skilled and successful professional who offers his/her services pro bono to the public is a lot more qualified than can be said for opportunists who have been polluting our governments especially since Reagan, whether local of federal.

Not least of all, by providing her services for free, Ms. Jacobs gets to understand the real nature of our profoundly corrupt system that to this day is funding the banks that continue to debase our reality by pushing hundreds of thousands of families into forced foreclosures and then manipulate the system to extract yet money from the government (FDICO), bypassing the discredited and massive TARP fraud.

Or to paraphrase colonel Wilkerson: every four years our choice is between two idiots. Listen to this interview very carefully. This is one of the very best, in depth and honest interviews you will hear:
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=5591

[imdesign]

03:58 PM on 09/22/2010

Beautiful Ms Jacobs. You are serving in true love and light and inspire others to see that wealth can surround you in many different ways than money made at the expense of another. I'm sure you will also get paid more than you used to based on this foundation rather than for just making money.

You are one person making a difference. Multiplied by many more like you, will change a nation.

[KDog76A]

12:38 PM on 09/23/2010

I mostly agree, except that special interest on the left and right, along with the current administrations attitudes towards succesful people like Ms. Jacobs is to punish them in order to create a bureaucracy to take the place of noble and charitable work.

[imdesign]

04:09 PM on 09/23/2010

Hi KDog, let's see how it unfolds. traditionally you are so right, but let's see if this creates a groundswell of change that even the suffocation of bureaucracy finds a re-newed ability to view how things can be done. When a new approach in business and at community level has a foundation that resonates with people that overrides status, creed or colour, transition begins. It's up to us, one by one by one to co-create this change.

[OldTulsan]

02:49 PM on 09/22/2010

Good for Cheryl !!

Sadly, there will be many more unemployed people in legal professions..

http://www.manufacturingnews.com/news/10/0126/outsourcing.html
Outsourcing Firms And Foreign Countries Target More American Service Industries, Especially U.S. Law Firms

"More countries are successfully emulating India's fast growing outsourcing business sector and are targeting a broader array of services for growth, according to Duke University's Offshoring Research Network and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Foreign governments are providing incentives for new companies to start selling services to firms located in high-cost regions including the United States, according to a survey of 500 global outsourcing companies.

The number of outsourcing firms is growing fast in Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia. "New entrants from these emerging regions can be expected to intensify competition among providers, especially for commoditized contract centers, business process outsourcing and IT services," says the study..."

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/09/15-3
Exporting Jobs, Importing Workers | CommonDreams.org

"by Jim Hightower

Maybe you're one of the thousands of young lawyers in America working in some low-skill, part-time job because law firms have cut so many of the starting positions you were educated to take. If so, I have good news: Jobs for young lawyers are now mushrooming in companies that provide legal services to U.S. corporations.

Unfortunately, you'll have to move to India to get one. And the pay will be - how shall I put this? - "disappointing..."

[RW11]

05:17 PM on 09/22/2010

From 2002 to 2008 inclusive, there were almost 200,000,000 "job losses" in the private sector of the US labor force - http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?bd

In that same period, 1,118,308 workers were certified as being eligible for Trade Adjustment Assistance. That's 0.56% of the total job losses in that period.

Don't you think you would be better off worrying about what's behind the other 99.44% of job losses?

[OldTulsan]

07:11 PM on 09/22/2010

Do you favor offshoring of jobs ?

[The Albany Kid]

06:06 PM on 09/22/2010

Funny, with those new ("My name is Peggy") Discover Card commercials, I could have sworn that *Scandinavia* was the world's outsourcing capital. j/k

Seriously though, you have raised a very important issue. I can't help but wonder what percentage of 1Ls and aspiring 1Ls realize that even the $20 / hr doc review jobs that so many young lawyers depend on during tough times are being shipped off to India.

[OldTulsan]

07:23 PM on 09/22/2010

Any job that can be performed at a desk or a computer can be performed overseas for much less:

o computer programmer
o accountant
o architect
o engineer
o radiologist
o legal services:

http://www.manufacturingnews.com/news/10/0126/outsourcing.html
Outsourcing Firms And Foreign Countries Target More American Service Industries, Especially U.S. Law Firms

The medical industry is being globalized, per the Price Waterhouse Cooper report from 2006:

http://www.eucomed.org/upload/pdf/tl/2005/extranet/communications/resources/healthcast2020.pdf
HealthCast 2020: Creating a Sustainable Future

"England builds a patient safety reporting system on same concept as aviation safety system in U.S.

The Philippines export nurses around the globe.

The U.S. turns to Indian and Australian companies for outsourcing radiology readings

Companies in South Africa contract with the NHS in England for a variety of surgical procedures

Australia enhances U.S.’s DRG system, which is subsequently adapted by Singapore, France and Germany.

Pharmaceutical makers move clinical trials from U.S. and Europe to
India...."

Some U.S. employers are paying employees and dependents to have surgeries in other countries:

http://money.cnn.com/2010/08/11/news/companies/health_care_medical_travel/index.htm
One way to cut health care costs? Outsource surgeries - Aug. 11, 2010

"NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Tina Follett and her husband Patrick are in Panama on a two-week all-expenses paid trip. But Tina isn't on vacation. She's there to get surgery..."