When you have legal questions that need answering use Court Fish. It provides a superior set of solutions to other legal Q&A websites out there. Court Fish is better than other question and answer websites for a number of reasons. Here are five.

1.  Legal questions on Court Fish are answered by legal professionals vetted for their skills and experience.  Kirk Walker, one of the founders of Court Fish, has satisfactorily answered many legal questions online and has received plenty of positive feedback from satisfied customers.
2. Court Fish is an industry leader, by permitting you to hire legal professionals who satisfactorily answer your questions for legal and other projects through our "Hire a Lawyer" marketplace.
3. At Court Fish we can assist you with your legal document preparation needs through our affiliate partner, Law Depot. You can ask questions and/or hire a legal professional to assist you prepare legal documents that you have purchased through Law Depot.
4. The website is unique in that we can assist you with you legal education needs through our affiliate partner JurisDictionary. If you enroll in their course, you can ask legal professionals on our websites questions that may arise based on your unique circumstances as you take the course.
5. Court Fish is the right size for you. We are small and accessible rather than large and impersonal. On many other Q&A websites, questions go unanswered for weeks and months, that will not happen at Court Fish.

So do not delay. Do not hesitate. If you need a legal question answered. Try Court Fish TODAY!!

Hello everyone, my name is Jeff Meltzer. I am a business man, but my role in Court Fish is driven by passion more than business. I am not one of those people who got out of bed one day planning to exploit the fact that the legal profession involves billions upon billions of dollars. Though it is very much true that the legal profession involves a lot of money. What got me involved in the Court Fish Revolution was my own personal negative experiences with the law as a business man. And trust me, in the course of running a small company, I have witnessed first hand the disadvantages of entering the court system with a limited purse and limited legal education. My negative experiences have inspired me to get involved with initiatives to even the legal playing field and to ensure that all can afford and receive access to proper legal representation. Yes, I will also freely admit, that I have a personal vendetta against those who use the legal system unfairly to their advantage.

My first negative encounter with the law was chronicled by the LA Times (see LA Times article here). There a highly litigious former client of mine named Robert W. Hirsh, who also happened to be an Attorney, was frivolously manipulating the law to his advantage and was getting away with it.

The story began when Hirsh purchased a million dollar house. He then did not want to pay various contractors he hired, including myself. I successful sued Hirsh in small claims court for $150, a paltry sum. However what happened next bordered on ridiculous. Hirsh successfully got the judgment set aside through a counter suit that he filed for $75,000. In the counter suit he claimed that I had supplied substandard material for his wood flooring. After months of litigation, my insurance company settled the case with Hirsh for $9,000. I did not want to settle but eventually caved to pressure from my insurance company after they indicated that I would be on the hook for any damage judgment if the case went to trial.

I could not understand how I was the victim in this case and yet Hirsh walked away with the money. As time progressed, I had other negative experiences with the legal system. In some cases I received poor representation from lawyers whose services I retained. Some lawyers out there should not be practicing law, are deserving of being disbarred, and should be subject to malpractice suits.

Due to my negative experiences I became very distrustful of the legal system. After all, I have personally experienced the ways in which people manipulate the legal system to their own ill gotten gain. I have also personally experienced the ways in which people with limited resources suffer from sub par representation.

Tired of being the victim, I registered and did the Jurisdictionary Step by Step Program. It equipped me with the tools I needed to ensure that my legal representatives where representing me in a proper manner, it informed me about my rights, and it taught me what I should expect when representing myself or when I retain a lawyer to represent me. The knowledge I learned in the program changed my view of the legal system and enabled me to stop being a victim.

This program cost me only a couple of hundred dollars to do. The expense was well worth it and has saved me thousands upon thousands of dollars. Knowledge is power after all. CLICK HERE to check out the Jurisdictionary Program. It made a difference in my life and it can do the same for you whether you are a pro se litigant or you are about to go out there and retain legal representation.

I am very happy that I did the Jurisdictionary program. I am however not satisfied with merely empowering myself. I am on a crusade to ensure that all can access proper legal information and representation -- hence Court Fish. Court Fish makes the legal system more manageable for people in a variety of ways. Through Court Fish you can: ask Court Fish Attorneys legal questions; hire a Court Fish legal professionals to provide legal representation, education, and support; register to do the Jurisdictionary Step-by-Step Program; and purchase legal document templates from Law Depot.

There are somethings that just sound right. Florida is the number 1 state to live in the United States, Florida is the happiest state in the Union, Florida is the state of choice for retirees. Those are things that sound right and are pleasing to the ear. Then there are somethings that do not sound right. Like, Florida is the number 1 state for Mortgage Fraud. 1  Each time I hear that phrase my eardrums pound unpleasantly. Where are these mortgage fraudsters coming from? I would love if they could return to the cracks from which they have crawled from and stop giving honest mortgage brokers a bad name.

Florida is attractive to fraudsters for some of the same reasons that it is attractive to honest mortgage brokers. Florida is a popular place to vacation and many people go there to retire. This means that there are many older people with capital to spend on the real estate. The property market in Florida is large (second only to California). Florida is also attractive to fraudsters for reasons that I hope have nothing in common with the motives of a typical mortgage broker. Florida's real estate market is presently in some sort of a flux, which gives fraudsters opportunities to take advantage. Fraudsters may also be attracted to Florida because they believe that retirees are an easier group to prey on because of their age.

One popular way to commit mortgage fraud is through “flipping”. In the past, flipping was a particularly tempting practice because of the rapidly rising prices in real estate. In the present, now that the housing bubble has burst, flipping surprisingly continues to be a popular practice with fraudsters. How is that even possible? Well, fraudsters, with a little help from title companies, attorneys and appraisers are creating false documents that range from income statements right down to appraisals. In a recent case in Florida, a vacant lot was shown as a $500,000 duplex.2   It is amazing that people think they can get away with practices like that. Eventually the law catches up to them. But how do we prevent such fraud from happening in the first place?

Preventing fraud is easier now than it has been in the past. Fraudulent income documents can be easily verified. In the past W2s and tax returns were taken as genuine when the borrower submitted them. Now there are services which can provide verification of the genuineness of documents that are purportedly from the IRS. However, more can be done with the present regulatory framework for preventing mortgage fraud.

Presently, there are no specific laws to deal with mortgage fraud.3   Most times when mortgage fraud is caught it is prosecuted as bank, wire or mail fraud. In addition, the incidence of mortgage loans being given based on incorrect information remains too high. It is certainly about time that mortgage specific legislation is put in place. There also is a need for high profile prosecutions with large sentences to really drive the message home.

1Mortgage Asset Research Institute, Twelfth Periodic Mortgage Fraud Case Report, April 2010.

2Diane C. Lade, Florida again top state for mortgage fraud, report finds: Appraisal misrepresentation skyrocketing, but phony applications are down, Sun Sentinel (April 26, 2010).

3§ 11:82.50. Mortgage loan fraud, West's Key Number Digest.