About Desert Edge Legal Services and Christine Springer
This is the story of my small business.
My name is Christine Springer, and I'm the founder of Desert Edge Legal Services, LLC. I founded the company in 2007 at an important time in my life. I had a major spiritual awakening in 2007 and realized that it was time to pursue a new direction in my career.
I have worked in many law firms on both the defense and plaintiff side. I started out as a legal secretary and worked my way up to paralegal as my education continued.
I have three degrees: an A.A.S in Paralegal Studies, a B.S. in Management and a M.A. in International Studies from Washington University in St. Louis.
I have worked in the legal field for 25 years. Starting Desert Edge Legal has been one of the best things I've done for my own personal and professional growth.
After I finished my M.A. in 2006, I realized that I was likely going to be overqualified for most paralegal jobs. However, I wasn't ready to stop being a paralegal, and starting Desert Edge Legal allowed me to have the kinds of career experiences that I couldn't have in traditional law firms.
I was so idealistic when I started the company. I laugh about it now, because I just knew that I could help people. I had been heavily influenced by my graduate studies and then I read the Four Hour Work Week and was sold on the entrepreneur lifestyle and the freedom. Never mind that I had absolutely no idea how to run a business and didn't know anyone else who had successfully started a business.
However, I was confident in my paralegal abilities and I knew that I could help people find creative solutions to their legal issues. And so the adventure began.
In retrospect, it's been a wild ride, with things happening that I could have never even expected. It's been full of obstacles, difficulty and other times, big victories for my clients. It has required me to dig deep after being tested many times by some difficult situations.
When I started DEL, I initially offered a service that helped people set up LLCs and corporations. I offered a complete package of setup, publication, a corporate minute book with initial minutes and resolutions. The package price also included filing and publication fees.
When the financial crisis began in April of 2007, I had a lot of people asking for help with loan modifications. I started to look at Truth in Lending and RESPA laws for leverage to help people get loan modifications. I learned how to analyze TILA calculations and look for hidden charges and fees.
As the overall foreclosure crisis continued, the legal strategies of the banks also changed. Initially, a lot of homeowners worked together at a grassroots level to help other people and many saw success. This is perhaps the main reason the case law changed so quickly – attorneys weren’t keen on helping people at that time for various reasons.
I began to look at the recorded documents, and research various facts, public sources of information and other information in the public domain to compare the information with the information the bank was using to foreclose.
As a result of my work on behalf of homeowners, an organic investigative process was born. I still use this investigative process today. It's been an invaluable tool to find the weaknesses in a bank’s foreclosure case, which homeowners can leverage to defend their foreclosure.
Eventually, I went on to help lawyers learn how to critically review a set of loan documents, and I even helped a couple of attorneys keep their own homes. Just about everyone who followed the process I created managed to get a better outcome. Sometimes they just wanted to buy time; other times they wanted a loan modification. Several received large principal reductions.
I also learned how to do legal research and understand the case law decisions and how they impacted homeowners. Additionally, I created digital products that teach people how to audit their own loans.
In late 2013 and early 2014, the courts began to shift more in favor of homeowners. Here in Arizona, the Steinberger decision was the turning point. You can read about that case here on my blog – I audited the Plaintiff’s loan and had worked with her attorney to help her save her own home.
Since that time, I have worked as a paralegal on a project basis, and during the pandemic I cared for my mother. She passed away in November 2022, and it's time for me to create my new normal.
At present, I have no idea if we'll have another real estate crisis. I do think we'll see some corrections because of interest rates, and perhaps a return to normal levels of foreclosures after the moratoriums during the pandemic.
I am available for contract paralegal work, property analytics, legal entity formations and related assistance.
If you would like to support my small business but don't need my help, I invite you to consider becoming a paid subscriber for as little as $5 per month. It's free to sign up for public posts and you'll get them in your inbox as soon as I publish. I never share or rent my list and you can opt out at any time.
I also offer digital e-books for sale at Christine Springer Media. Learn to audit your own loan yourself with my book, DIY Foreclosure Review for Homeowners. There are other digital products for real estate professionals, people who would like to learn how to audit, a package to get you started blogging on the Ghost platform (this blog runs on Ghost instead of WordPress) and more.
If you need assistance, please contact me to discuss working together at christine (at) Desert Edge Legal (dot) com.
Thank you for supporting my small business! I appreciate it!