The Legal League 2026 Spring Conference drew industry professionals from across the country to participate in an informative series of sessions on March 25-26 at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas.
Open to all mortgage lending and servicing professionals, GSEs, government entities, and Legal League
members, the annual Spring Servicer Summit gathers the nation’s elite financial services law firms to discuss default policies, procedures, and emerging issues with leading mortgage servicing executives. The unique opportunities for education, networking, and engaging discussions on pressing issues impacting financial services law firms are not to be missed.
Here are the topics attendees got to dive into during this year’s Summit.
Panel 1: From 50-Year Mortgages to Rising Foreclosures
The mortgage landscape is undergoing rapid transformation, and servicers are facing new product structures, evolving regulatory expectations, and shifting default trends.
The first panel included Jane Bond, Managing Partner, SE Litigation of MRLP, LLP; Hilary Bonial, Managing
Director at Bonial & Associates P.C.; Deloise Browne-Milner, Senior Operations Manager, Foreclosure, Bankruptcy, & Distressed Properties at Freddie Mac; LeAllen Frost, EVP & Deputy General Counsel at PennyMac; and Michael Merritt, SVP, Head of Default and Customer Care for BOK Financial.
This session brought together seasoned General Counsel from two major mortgage servicers, a leading
mortgage servicing attorney, and an industry-wide data expert known for his insights on foreclosure volumes.
Together, they broke down the most pressing issues shaping default servicing in 2026, including affordability pressures facing borrowers, differences in performance between GSE and FHA
modification products, and economic and policy factors impacting housing access.
During the first panel discussion, panelists emphasized that defaults, bankruptcies, and consumer distress
are rising, not due to risky origination practices, but because escalating taxes, insurance, utilities, and household costs are eroding affordability long after loans were originated.
This included discussions on the 50-year mortgage concept floated by the Trump administration earlier in the year, which was generally regarded as a non-starter. Panelists noted that while extending the length of the loan could lower monthly payments, it could also significantly drive up interest over the
life of the loan.
Merritt also touched on performance of loss-mitigation options such as 40-year mods, saying, “If you have
to go to that level of extreme to get a customer into an affordable payment, it is a sign they’re probably stretched financially. And with the other housing costs and insurance going up, it feels like what we can control on the P&I side is getting smaller.”
“Affordability is not a simple fix,” Merritt added. “We didn’t get into the affordability crisis overnight and solutions will have to continue to evolve.”
In addition to economic pressures, panelists described a servicing environment becoming more operationally
demanding, from AI-assisted pro se litigation to TCPA exposure and increased scrutiny around foreclosure timelines, bankruptcy compliance, assumptions, and distressed collateral management.
Frost noted that many of the current TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act) cases center around the do-not-call registry, with every call or text in violation of that statute potentially accruing a fine.
The panelists noted that AI is being extensively utilized in pro se cases, especially those involving so-called “sovereign citizens” who argue that they are exempt from federal laws. Frost noted that “AI is now writing them pleadings that look almost like they’re written by an attorney, and so it is much easier for
them to get past that pleading stage.”
Panel 2: Market Forces, Risk, and the Future of Servicing
Industry experts next held a forward-looking discussion on the economic and market forces influencing our industry. This session covered the broader economic outlook with a lens toward supply and demand shifts,
buyer and seller trends, delinquency and foreclosure patterns, mortgage servicing changes, consolidation across the industry, and the evolving role of the GSEs.
Panelists included Patrick O’Brien, COO for Stern & Eisenberg; Daren Blomquist, VP Market Economics at
Auction.com; LaQuanda Sain, EVP, Servicing at Rocket Mortgage; and Nolan Turner, Managing Director at
Carrington Mortgage.
Blomquist noted that the jobs market has not only been challenging, but that revisions in jobs market data over the past year mean that the market is actually “worse than what we thought it was.”
Blomquist added that “consumer debt overall—credit card, auto, along with mortgage—is at its highest level
since 2013.” He also cited consumer sentiment hitting “a 40-year low” last year. “It bounced back a little bit, but it’s still pretty low,” he said.
“The manufacturing index is a good indicator of recession when it goes below 50. That has bounced back above 50,” Blomquist said. “So, the sentiment is actually improving recently, although I would say probably the next surveys that come out, that may be changing. But some of the hard data that we look
at is not so rosy.”
LaQuanda Sain of Rocket Mortgage echoed the challenges facing many Americans, saying, “Many families are
one unexpected expense away from financial distress. They’re working hard to stay above water, but the financial cushion they once had is disappearing.
Homeowners are navigating rising costs from every direction, and many no longer have the financial cushion
they had when they first purchased their home.”
Panel 3: Foreclosing Outside the Standard Model
This panel focused on the unique operational and legal challenges of specialty servicing and where traditional foreclosure models fall short. Panelists included Michael Chisholm, Director of Client Relations, Friedman Vartolo; Roy Diaz, Managing Shareholder at Diaz Anselmo; and Dave Hughes, Senior Director of Servicing for Lima One Capital.
They discussed system limitations tied to non-standard foreclosure timelines, managing departures from
standard workflows, and adjusting servicing expectations and performance metrics. The conversation also
addressed escalation and exception governance, cross-functional coordination among servicing, legal, field services, and asset management, and the added complexity created by investor and asset manager involvement—particularly in BPL portfolios.
“The BPL borrower is a completely different animal,” Hughes said. “With a homeowner, there’s an emotional
connection to the property. When you get into a delinquency situation, everything revolves around the reason for delinquency. On the BPL side, that’s not the case. What you have is a business, [so] the questions that you’re asking them and the way you approach the delinquency is very, very different than
on the residential side.”
Panel 4: HUD Servicing Guide Updates – What Servicers Need to Know
Members of this panel examined recent updates to the HUD Servicing Guide, with a focus on key loss mitigation changes and updates to CAFMV calculations. They discussed practical implications for servicers, compliance considerations, and how these changes may impact day-to-day operations.
Panelists included Ryan Bourgeois, Partner with Barrett Daffin Frappier Turner and Engel, LLP; Caren Castle, Senior Managing Attorney at The Mortgage Law Firm; Candace Russell, VP of Post-Sale Activities, Default Servicing with Carrington Mortgage Services; and Timika Scott, SVP, Default Ops Recovery & Loss Prevention with U.S. Bank.
“Part of what we need to think about in doing loss mitigation [is that] we’re trying to get the borrower to a payment they can afford. And in many circumstances, that just isn’t possible,” Castle noted. “Partial claims help, whether it’s HUD or VA, but if you can’t afford the underlying payment, just putting that portion of the loan somewhere else doesn’t always solve the problem.”
Bourgeois continued the discussion of the use of partial claims.
“The statute limits the partial claim to one partial claim per loan,” he said. “If you got one during COVID, you’re not eligible for another partial claim. So, making sure borrowers don’t pull
that lever until they absolutely need it [is] probably a good idea.”
Russell said the partial shouldn’t be used in all cases.
“I think some of the industry interpretation has been that the waterfall is intentional in trying to make sure you hit other goals before you hit the partial because the partial is not meant to just be used for everybody in every situation.”
Russell added, “Those two steps above it are to keep partials at a minimum. Some of our feedback has been
that we would’ve really preferred it to be the other way. We think that it works differently in the other products. And I think they’re going to continue to see that limitation on usage is probably some of the intent behind some of the reworking.”
Panel 5: Complex Litigation: Risks, Remedies, and Litigation Strategies
Leading practitioners held an in-depth discussion of the legal and practical challenges driving complex
litigation in 2026. Their topics included FAPA developments, tactics for overcoming court backlogs and delays, handling jury trials in foreclosure matters, the increasing use of FDCPA and UDAAP claims as counterclaim weapons, and navigating the unique risks posed by zombie mortgages and charged-off debt.
Panelists included Stephen Hladik, Partner at Hladik, Onorato & Federman, LLP; Alicia Byrd, Bankruptcy
Manager at AMIP Management; Clay Gordon, Director of Complex Litigation & Strategic Initiatives at McMichael Taylor Gray LLC; Reneau Longoria, Managing Member and Owner at Doonan, Graves and Longoria LLC;
and Julie O’Hara, Managing Director with PRP Advisors.
“Necessity is the mother of invention. So, oftentimes we think of receivers with distressed property: you
want to get in there,” Longoria said. “We’re asking for an offensive receiver so that we don’t end up with a defensive situation where the state or county or city has a receiver. When it comes to strategic litigation and trying to control the leak, thinking about receivers at different times is important.”
Hladik steered the discussion toward judgments.
“A lot of people think that the judgment’s the end of the line. We got our foreclosure. There are no delays after judgment.”
O’Hara picked up the ball and discussed the intricacies of “what’s next?”
“We get our foreclosure judgment, and the common thought is, okay, what’s next?” O’Hara said. “We’re going
to go to sale, but the borrower now wants to play Let’s Make a Deal. They don’t have an instrument to modify. There is a judgment. It is not a note and mortgage that they can cure. There is a judgment, and that judgment says, ‘This is owed, and we are going to sell.’”
Gordon talked about properties in one state, while the guarantee is based on the law in another state.
“So, one of the cool things or the interesting things, at least professionally, about some of these business purpose loans is you have a separate choice of law provisions on actions involving property in one state, but the guarantee is based on the law in another state, and it gives you options of where you want to go,” Gordon said.
“Let’s say, for example, all the parties are in the state of New York, but there’s a choice of law provision there which allows you to go back and perhaps pursue the claim in Florida,” Gordon said. “So those are sort of the things that you can look to help avoid the inevitable log jam that obviously
everyone knows would happen in New York if you file an action.”
Many of the Legal League Summit speakers will reconvene at the Five Star Conference, Sept. 1-3 at the Omni
Hotel in Dallas. You can learn more at fivestarconference.com and visit the
official Legal League website at legal-league100.com.
