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50 As a kid, I wanted to be an archaeologist or an FBI agent. My father was a medical doctor; my mother a professor. I learned firsthand what I did not want for myself. My first memories from my first year at Albany Law School were of sitting in Real Estate 101 with Professor Dubroff—a solid professor but hindered by boring material. Bank A assigns mortgage to Bank C. Bank C assigns to Bank D. Bank A then assigns to Bank B. "What the Heck?" "How could that ever be?" Apparently, those fact patterns turned out to be my life's calling. I moved to Florida after graduating from law school, and by total chance, a roommate worked for a bank/servicer. I got a position as a Foreclosure Coordinator in August 1997. It was a different era then, but the job is pretty much what you assume. I referred cases to outside counsel in Pennsylvania and other states while monitoring their timelines. We had some autonomy choosing firms, and the servicing technology was seemingly not much different than today, outside of the rows of fax machines. I would order the collateral from the vault and manually fill out the foreclosure referral with a pen to include the long FITNO with the trustee and securitization pool. I would ship all the referrals with collateral in a FedEx to the law firms with a coversheet attached. After that, the job was reporting, tracking, obtaining affidavits/assignments and attending meetings. I had to wear a suit every day. We worked closely with the Loan Resolution Department (LRCs), which is where I would meet my wife. LRCs handled the deal-making on residential loans, whether it was forbearances, modifications, or short- sales. ey were much the same workouts as those used today, but without as many rules impacting how contact can be made, and workouts processed. CFPB, HAMP, and other familiar acronyms we use today routinely didn't exist then. I eventually moved to the REO Department as Fannie Mae Coordinator, where I was the liaison responsible for REOs being sold and closed by Fannie Mae's real estate department, as opposed to the in-house REO sales department. It was an uncomfortable position given that my success meant everyone else's jobs could be outsourced to Dallas. I later moved to the position of REO Closing Manager, with my own network of attorneys and title companies and a primary focus of closing the REO contracts by month's end. e "closers" were in six cubes, surrounded by a sea of REO Sales Manager cubes "prairie dogging" daily, asking for status. is was my favorite position and it gave me the experience needed to open my own department at a servicer in Miami. My experience was that of a smaller servicer shop. It was more casual having the feel of a large family business rather than a large, publicly traded corporation. I was referring out a lot less work, and some attorneys definitely treated me differently as a result. I had an Access database system built for my REO Closing department to process our closings. I opened my law firm in July 2004, following a couple years of private practice in local law firms handling foreclosures. My wife Antonella and I were the first two employees in our office—then in Hollywood, Florida. Having both started on the servicing side, we A LIFE IN THE DEFAULT PROFESSION Legal League Vice-Chair Anthony Van Ness looks back at a career spent working in default legal services. By: J. Anthony Van Ness Legal Industry Update

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