This past month, Governor Schwarzenegger signed SB94 into law, which criminalizes certain behavior involved in performing loan modifications. The bill is aimed at loan mod scam artists. However, some attorney groups are concerned, because the bill may be overly broad, in criminalizing the acceptance of up-front fees. While this provision is sound as against non-attorneys, it nevertheless punishes attorneys, who do take money up front but are already required both by the law and by the California State Bar to maintain the money in a client trust account known as an IOLTA. This practice protects the lawyer from free-loading clients, and protects clients from lawyers who might otherwise take the money and run.
You can read the text of the bill in HTML form or download it as a PDF file.
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