My Internship At Philadelphia Legal Assistance

My internship at Philadelphia Legal Services, for the most part, consists of working on the recently established Predatory Lending Hotline. I answer calls from all over the city and determine whether each caller has a predatory mortgage. If the caller’s home is in foreclosure, I determine at what stage of foreclosure the client’s home is in. If the caller’s loan is predatory, I write up a description of the client’s situation and give that account over to a panel of attorneys who are certified to take predatory lending cases. Depending on the time-frame, I refer each of the other cases involving foreclosure to one of several housing counseling agencies. The laws governing predatory lending, which I familiarized myself with for the purpose of diagnosing the fairness of each loan, are for the most part contained in the Pennsylvania Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law, the Truth in Lending Act, and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act.

These laws that I learned about and worked with gave me a foundation to approach some more permanent questions about what I am really doing. I would like to just name a few of the more significant issues as a way of reminding myself about what my work might be about. First, these laws are applied to individuals who are calling with individual stories and motives. The law then is more than some laws, it is how these laws are applied and worked into the situations of real people- and I am taking part in that. Furthermore, these laws can serve different goals and there exists an important distinction between such possible goals. One motivation for using these laws could be to fight the evil represented by predatory lending and the other could be to assist individuals, one at a time, in hanging on to their their homes. (My formulation of this distinction is inspired by a recent article written by an LSC official on the history of Legal Services. See, Mauricio Vivero, From "Renegade" Agency to Institution of Justice, 29 Fordham Urb. L.J. 1323 (Fall 2002).) Finally, there is a distinction to be made between referring a client to an agency and giving the client options and choices that might be available to the client if the client wants to act to save his or her own home. I won’t know for a while but I think that giving a choice rather than an order might make some difference.