I'm what you call a "recovering attorney." You have heard of recovering alcoholics? Well, I'm a "recovering attorney." I was fascinated by being an attorney. But I worked myself too hard at it. I worked in the legal salt mines. I litigated before judges and juries. I have written probably 1,000 purchase and sale agreements, residential and commercial. I have escrowed probably 3,000 residential, commercial, and business escrows. I have facilitated probably 60 tax-deferred exchanges. I have written probably 200 wills and trusts. It was a challenge, and fun in a way. But it was too exhausting.

In 2000 I figured out that doing mortgages would use all my skills as an attorney and give me a huge and unfair advantage over other mortgage companies, and that I could make more money.

In July of 2007 mortgage work hit a brick wall. Lenders were not lending. Property values dropped. Lenders were requiring borrowers to document their income fully. Borrowers had trouble refinancing. The people with the biggest problems were those who bought using adjustable rate loans. They couldn't refinance out of them because there was not enough equity in the properties.

So I got involved in mortgage loan modification, in which clients, instead of getting a new loan, modify the loan they have. Under the right circumstances, the interest rate can be lowered, arrearages can be added to principal or forgiven, and sometimes principal balances can be reduced. Mortgage modification has kept me busy, and that is where I put most of my work time.

When I am not earning a living I am busy planting and digging in my garden, inventing recipes, playing my musical instruments, and work on my web sites and books.

I work with my dear wife Emelyn. She serves as office manager. She keeps the bills paid and the credit score high.

I went to the University of Washington for law school. I wanted to go into environmental law. But I couldn't break into Seattle's very tightly knit environmental law club. I worked in Consumer Protection law. I was a member of SCAN, Seattle Consumer Action Network. I mostly represented people who bought used cars and got ripped off. To make a decent living I got into real estate law. 

Before that I was a school counselor. I quit after one year. Teachers don't' get the respect they deserve. Actually, I had already taken the Law School Aptitude Test, the L-SAT, before I started work as a counselor. It was while I was working on my M.Ed. in Psych that I took a legal seminar regarding student rights. That's what first got me interested in law.