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Forms / Agreements / White Papers

WHITE PAPER ON TITLE ISSUES

MODEL LEGAL SERVICES AGREEMENT

In 2001, USFN developed a Legal Services Agreement that law firms and servicers can use as a model for the retention of law firms by servicers for foreclosure, bankruptcy, loss mitigation, and related services.  The model Agreement was developed after reviewing several major mortgage company agreements and creating a standardized version that incoprorates terms needed by both parties.  The model Agreement includes addenda (exhibits) to allow for customization as needed.

Click here to download the Model Legal Services Agreement (Word doc format).  You can then save it to your computer and modify it to suit your needs.

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SERVICING TRANSFER CHECKLIST

USFN's Task Force on Servicing Transfers / Best Practices was organized in 2004, as an outgrowth of discussions at USFN's Advisory Board meetings.

The purpose of the Task Force was to develop a set of best practices for servicing transfers.   The best practices would set forth suggestions from the attorney’s perspective on how servicers can improve the servicing transfer process.  The best practices would also provide a perspective from the legal department and default departments of participating servicers.  Once completed, the best practices would be made available to all servicer shops, encouraging sharing within their departments that handle these servicing transfers.

The following Best Practices are made available by USFN and its Advisory Board for the use of all servicers.   Developed in “checklist” format, they are intended to set forth the standard operating procedures and processes to assist in an orderly and complete transfer of servicing portfolios from one shop to another.  It is hoped that the checklists, one each for outgoing and incoming transfers, will be an effective tool for servicing companies to use in training and guiding their staff who handle transfers.

• New Servicer  
• Transferring Servicer  

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MODEL ATTORNEY REPORT CARD

In 2002 and 2003, a group of 20 individuals, collectively known as the Servicer-Attorney Collaboration Task Force, a subgroup of USFN’s Advisory Board, met on a number of occasions to discuss the issue of attorney “report cards,” or scorecards.   Seven law firms (USFN Member firms) of varied size represented the Attorney input, while representatives from 10 major servicing companies (and one GSE) provided the input on behalf of the Servicers.

The objectives for this group were to:

• Discuss and reach consensus on issues pertaining to the various report card formats that are currently used by servicing companies to rate attorney firms on their work;
• Share best practices;
• Draft a model uniform report card format, for judicial and non-judicial states, with some flexibility for individualization, while still providing a standardized format to eliminate the necessity for a majority of the “keyed” responses from the law firms.

The result of this 18-month project are the Model Report Card and a User’s Guide, which set a basic framework from which a servicing company can construct a report card tool to use in scoring and ranking its law firms on work performed.   The group noted that during the process, from initiation of “first legal” through the sale of the property, that certain events can be outside the control of either the law firm and/or the servicer.  To address this issue, “carve-outs” were agreed to by the group, to allow for recognition of such events during the scoring process.

This Model Report Card and User’s Guide are made available by USFN and by the Servicer-Attorney Collaboration Task Force members, for use by any servicer who may be looking for the initial basis for its organization’s report card, or for a comparative model.

• Attorney Report Card Template  
• User's Guide 

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