Yet Another Pocket of Opportunity: One Man’s Dream House Is Another Man’s Bread’n’Butter

Warning! Today’s pocket of opportunity may make you feel a little…conflicted. But, it is a bona fide business and career opportunity that is lucrative and growing now, and looks good for the near future.

When I facilitate group coaching sessions, I often lead an exercise designed to identify and explore business and career opportunities based on current and future trends. Inevitably, someone in the group will launch a mini-protest against opportunities they believe have some moral or political component–opportunities in the adult entertainment industry or involving faith-based organizations, for example.

This opportunity involves neither, but there are some who believe it’s sort of…unsavory. Dying to know what it is? Okay, I’ll tell you!

It’s…Foreclosure Law.

Sounds clinical and benign, right? Generally, it is. Foreclosure law is the bland corner of the legal profession that files and litigates foreclosure actions on behalf of banks and other lien-holders. In a normal economy, they operate in the shadows, quietly architecting and shuffling the legal bits that allow lien-holders to seek re-dress against that small percentage of the population that cannot or will not pay their bills.

Now, in the midst of the mortgage mess, foreclosure lawyers and a their supporting cast of paralegals, law clerks, process servers, court reporters and other staff, have taken their place just left of center stage (we’ll keep mortgage companies and financial institutions at center stage).

Law firms specializing in foreclosure law are benefiting from the fallout. In nearly every state, foreclosure filings are up exponentially and law firms, legal recruiting and staffing firms and related businesses are hiring to keep up with the increased case load.

No where is this opportunity more lucrative and booming than in Florida. In Hillsborough County (Tampa, FL) the number of filings is up nearly 40% over last year. A single law firm in that county filed over 400 foreclosure filings in the month of February.

That kind of increase, coupled with the thousands of foreclosures to come, spells big job and business opportunity. Even private equity firms (last year’s superstar deal-makers) are getting in on the bonanza, investing millions in legal staffing and outsourcing firms.

JOB & BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES IN THE FORECLOSURE INDUSTRY

Foreclosure attorneys
Associate/Jr. attorneys (any specialty)
Court reporters
Law clerks
Legal recruiters
Legal secretary
Paralegals
Process servers
Records/document management services
Other legal staff
Legal staffing services (temp lawyers, paralegals, clerks, other staff)
Legal outsourcing services (handles back-office foreclosure-processing operations for big law firms)
Other foreclosure industry jobs

Florida is not the only land of opportunity for those in the foreclosure business. Other markets with high foreclosure rates are also hot spots for the foreclosure industry. According to RealtyTrac, the states with the highest number of homes seized by lenders are (1) Colorado, (2) Nevada, (3) Arizona, (4) California and (5) Ohio.

Sympathetic as I am to the plight of homeowners who lose their homes to foreclosures, the opportunity here is undeniable and, for many, irresistible, especially in this blighted economy.