The 900-lawyer firm celebrates a homecoming this week as Holder, the nation’s first black attorney general, rejoins the firm as a white-collar partner. Covington plans to announce the news Monday, and his official start date will be in September.

“This is home for me,” Holder said. Margaret Richardson, his former chief of staff, also is joining the firm as an of counsel.

Holder, 64, left the U.S. Department of Justice in April after serving for six years. Before that, he had been a partner at Covington from 2001 to January 2009.

Practice plans

Holder told The National Law Journal in an interview that he planned to work on a mix of projects at Covington, from pro bono and access-to-justice issues, to counseling former and new clients on strategy and litigation.

“I would describe my work as being kind of at the intersection of business, law, public policy, international relations,” Holder…

Gov. Maggie Hassan has signed legislation that forces banks to mail foreclosure notices 45 days before scheduled auctions – nearly twice the number of days than is currently required in the state.

Loan providers are currently required to send notices 25 days before a sale, which is 12 days fewer than homeowners have under federal law to apply for a loan modification.

Lawmakers have been debating the extension for months. Proponents, who initially pushed for a 65-day notice, claim it will align the state with new federal guidelines announced last year through an effort to increase protections on struggling households.

Read on.

Valbuena v. Ocwen Loan Servicing

Court: California Court of Appeal Docket: B256378 Opinion Date: June 19, 2015
Areas of Law: Banking, Real Estate & Property Law
Plaintiffs filed suit against Ocwen after their lender’s purchase of their residence at a nonjudicial foreclosure sale, alleging that Ocwen violated Civil Code section 2923.6, the prohibition on “dual tracking” contained in the Homeowners Bill of Rights, when it conducted a foreclosure sale of plaintiffs’ property while their loan modification application was pending. The trial court sustained Ocwen’s demurrer. However, the court concluded that by alleging the submission of the loan modification application three days after receipt of the Offer Letter, and the transmittal of the additional documents requested by Ocwen on the date of request, plaintiffs have sufficiently alleged that a complete loan modification application was pending at the time Ocwen foreclosed on their home in violation of section 2923.6. Accordingly, the court…

What exactly does it mean for a big Wall Street bank to plead guilty to a serious crime? Right now, practically nothing.

But it will if California’s Santa Cruz County has any say.

First, some background.

Five giant banks – including Wall Street behemoths JPMorgan Chase and Citicorp – recently pleaded guilty to criminal felony charges that they rigged the world’s foreign-currency market for their own profit.

This wasn’t a small heist. We’re talking hundreds of billions of dollars worth of transactions every day.

via Robert Reich (How to Punish Bank Felons).

Ed Kane, a professor of finance at Boston College and grantee at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, studies the dangerous risk-taking of giant banks. He sees the cultures of Wall Street and regulators coming together to turn taxpayers into victims of theft and great harm. Like extreme drunk drivers before MADD or smokers on airplanes prior to the 1980s ban, megabankers currently get away with endangering others with little fear of repercussions. Kane discusses how changes in corporate law and culture must make it legally and socially unacceptable for bankers to blow their toxic fumes at the rest of us.

Read on.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is privately urging New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) to replace the head of the New York Department of Financial Services — Benjamin Lawsky, nicknamed the “Sheriff of Wall Street” for his tough enforcement approach — with Rohit Chopra, a top regulator at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

On Thursday, a coalition of consumer advocates and progressive groups also voiced their support for Chopra, saying in a release that he has “a strong record of uncovering and addressing predatory behavior” in the financial industry.

Chopra is currently the CFPB’s student loan ombudsman and assistant director. He has testified before Congress on the growing evidence for a negative “student debt domino effect” on the economy, caused by the country’s more than $1.2 trillion in outstanding loans. He has also investigated student loan servicing companies and is credited with aiding a…