Beyond Evictions: The Future of Scott Clark Law

Anthony Talarico: Just to kind of give you ⁓ just a tease of what the concierge service is, ultimately, it's a Saturday afternoon on a property. Most of the the leasing staff is on, you know, their weekend days off. You have a single leasing agent in the office, and then an irate tenant walks into the leasing office. They have an issue that is legal by nature, and typically the way that's handled is the leasing agent is like, I want out. And so they'll maybe say something to try and calm down the tenant. And just get them out the door and then all of a sudden now we're in some sort of legal entanglement with that tenant. Ultimately, what we want to do with our concierge service is take that burden on and take that burden away from the leasing staff or the on-site teams. Welcome to Property Lot Scale. Whether you're a property owner, investor, developer, HOA, or professional property manager, this is where you'll find practical conversations to help you protect your business and grow with confidence. Let's get started with today's episode. Hello, and thank you. Thank you for joining us. ⁓ my name's Chris Rogers. I'm the managing attorney here ⁓ at the law office of Scott Clark. And I'm here today with Anthony Helerico. ⁓ he's our managing director. ⁓ and we would just like to give you guys some updates on the future of the firm itself and kind of what's just generally going on with us moving forward. Yeah, for sure. So where do we start? ⁓ there's a lot. There is a lot. Promotion. You are now the managing attorney. Thank you very much. Well deserved. Well deserved. All right. So where are we going as a firm? I think that's kind of been the question that a lot of people have had over the the last year, year and a half. I have fielded that question quite a bit. Yeah. We're going in a lot of different directions, but it's all great. It's all amazing for the industry that we serve, ⁓ and a lot of the adjacent industries ⁓ within real estate. So the first one. The easiest one because most people have seen us already doing it is we are expanding into multiple states. So we currently serve Arizona, Nevada. We launched New Mexico ⁓ fourth quarter of last year. They're growing. It's been great. Client demand has shown interest in multiple states. And as a result, we're targeting Utah for the end of this year. ⁓ Justin, who is one of our senior attorneys, Justin Lines. Fantastic attorney. He is currently getting licensed in Utah. And ⁓ right now we're taking essentially applications from our clients to see ⁓ who is interested and who wants to start with us at launch. ⁓ we're also targeting Colorado for mid-2027. And from there, ⁓ we're going to be launching in Texas in 2028. We've had a lot of client interest in Texas, and Texas is expanding just as a market in general. ⁓ Mm-hmm. And twenty twenty nine will see us move into California. It's exciting. It's exciting for sure. Different kind of legal landscape in California than the than the other states, but that will make us ⁓ a regional, like a southwest regional ⁓ real estate firm. With that is kind of what comes with the next shift that we're doing as a firm. So I spent a lot of time with Scott, kind of talking about, you know, Scott, what's the direction that that you were interested in going. And really what it was was kind of taking a step back into the past and asking Scott specifically, you know, what areas did he want to grow into? Was he satisfied with where the the firm was? And ⁓ the answer was pretty much he wanted to expand the firm. However, logistically, it was not as easy as as it seemed. And the reason for that is, you know, Maricopa County alone has 26 and next year it'll be 27 justice courts. Prior to the COVID pandemic, it was required that you appear in person at those hearings. And, you know, we're talking about thousands of hearings across dozens of justice courts, and it logistically was just a nightmare. Obviously, the COVID pandemic ⁓ happened, and it was about when you came on to the firm. I came on right now. And it was codified that's ⁓ We could appear virtually. So all initial hearings we can appear appear virtually, which is makes it a lot easier ⁓ than it used to be. There's still some judges that make you do trials ⁓ in person, but that's becoming less and less frequent. Right. ⁓ I do remember a story that you brought it up that that Scott told me years, you know, years ago about how it used to be. And it was him with a typewriter driving around from justice court to justice court. While in between appearances, using his typewriter to get his filings done. I mean, it was just him. So it makes sense that he didn't have a whole bunch of time. When he's telling the story, he's always kind of like almost doing like a gorilla pose. He's like, Yeah, I'd have all these folders under my arms, like walking into court. So yeah. ⁓ much simpler now. Everything's online, everything's elect ⁓ electronic, our database handles everything. So we don't have quite the ⁓ the paper nightmare that it once was. ⁓ But in having those conversations with Scott, really there were there were two things as far as expanding the firm that he was adamant about. One is that we always served what I would call like landlord, landlord adjacent parties, right? So management companies, ownership groups, the investors, that area that we are not going to represent, tenants, buyers, that that side of the of the matter. The other one. is you know that we stayed within the realm of real estate law. And, you know, I really asked him kind of, well, how far do you want to go within real estate? Because it's a massive area of law. And ultimately what he came up with is he's okay with serving, you know, residential landlords. He's okay with doing commercial property. He's he wanted to do commercial property, actually. He was interested in expanding into homeowner associations, but again, due to the logistics, he just never did. Going into the industrial property sector, especially as you see all these warehouses kind of coming up across around the valley, ⁓ and just across the desert southwest as a whole, there's just a massive boom in in warehouses. ⁓ hospitality is another area, but more so in the ⁓ realm of short term rentals, storage, obviously, and then just generally land, ⁓ land use as a whole. And those are the seven property sectors that, you know, Scott was most interested in. Obviously the top three being residential, commercial, and associations. And so as you'll see, is as we're going through our strategic plan, which our str strategic plan is basically through 2030, is to have this kind of growth put into place. Our intent is to be, you know, in California and established by 2030, in addition to all the other states that we mentioned earlier. And then also serving these property sectors that we had just mentioned. But, you know, with that is actually increasing the sophistication of the caseload that we have as a firm, right? It's no secret that Scott, for many, many years is known for doing the evictions for multifamily properties. That's not by a long shot everything we do. No, it's not. ⁓ and I think a lot of it comes down to just having conversations like this, having candid conversations with our clients and really understanding what the legal ish issues are on their properties and how we can help them. ⁓ because as it currently stands, if you were to take evictions completely out of this, yes, we do fair housing defense, we do the AG ⁓ complaints. Consumer complaints. Mm-hmm. But we do quite a bit more from, you know, debt recovery on skip tenants. You know, we we write a lot of lease addenda. We traffes from scratch. ⁓ there's there's quite a bit that we do. And there's quite a bit more that we wanna do now that, you know, Scott's essentially given us permission to, you know, expand into these areas. ⁓ For me, what I really want to do is I I really want to communicate to the clients essentially what we're doing. And so the services that we offer are essentially broken down into seven different categories, right? Litigation, arbitration, mediation, ⁓ being our first service category and kind of self-explanatory and obvious what it does. But, you know, a lot of clients already send us their fair housing work, but expanding beyond that, there are a lot of caveats within just litigation that are either untouched or a lot of people don't know that that we currently touch. Right. And then it's not just litigation in the realm of evictions. It's not a secret for anyone in the industry. Landlords get sued a lot for many different reasons. Normally over security deposits, we handle all breach of contract claims when it comes to that as the as defense. And so I I think some of our clients don't necessarily know that, but it it's one of the things that we we do quite frequently A hundred percent. ⁓ second service category is ⁓ what we identify as negotiated legal services. ⁓ that one's very common. Obviously, if we can avoid litigation, we will avoid litigation. That's for everyone. Correct. And so you'll see a lot of mutual rescissions go out there, a lot of cease and desist letters. ⁓ just you know, whatever legal instrument we find is going to be valuable for that specific situation, we're going to apply it ⁓ essentially to relieve our client of any exposure that that they might have. That happens a lot with ⁓ responses to reasonable accommodations or reasonable modifications as well under the TA Housing Act. Yep. We do agreement drafting and execution that realistically there's a lot of clients where we will do an annual review of their leases across entire states or entire portfolios. ⁓ we will make our recommendations and, you know, when and if necessary, we will draft addenda or make the modifications within those leases ⁓ as a whole. Not just leases, we also do property management agreements, ⁓ PMAs, ⁓ things of that nature as well. Exactly. Removal, possession, recovery is the fourth service category. In that service category, that's where we house the evictions, right? As it relates to, for instance, ⁓ moving into homeowner associations, ⁓ the foreclosures related to ⁓ homeowner associations would actually fall under that service category as well. Right. Our fifth service category ⁓ we identify as guy ⁓ advisement. guidance and education. ⁓ what we already do within that are the fair housing trainings. Justin is kind of our go to guy. Justin is our go to guy. He's he's pretty much taken the reins on that. And he he's updated our presentation and he's given it dozens and dozens of times. Now he's he's gotten pretty good at it. Yeah. He's awesome. One of the services within that service category that we're really excited to launch and we'll have more details in it in the months to come is our concierge service and You know, just to kind of give you ⁓ just a tease of what the concierge service is, ultimately, it's a Saturday afternoon on a property. The most most of the the leasing staff is on you know, their weekend days off. You have a single leasing agent in the office, and then an irate tenant walks into the leasing office. They have an issue that is legal by nature, and typically the way that's handled is the leasing agent is like, I want out. And so They'll maybe say something to try and calm down the tenant and just get them out the door, and then all of a sudden now we're in some sort of legal entanglement with that tenant. Accidentally open themselves up to liability. Yeah. Yeah. That's the easiest way to say it. Ultimately what we want to do with our concierge service is take that burden on and take that burden away from the leasing staff or the on-site teams. We understand that the on-site teams, everybody on an on-site team. Everybody in the industry in general, ⁓ in multifamily wears multiple hats. ⁓ if we could take the legal hat off of you, then we might as well do it. And the thought process with concierge is you have an I rate tenant, rather than engaging with that tenant, ⁓ just let them know that they can reach out to the firm or to the ⁓ properties attorneys. They will hand them a card, there's a QR code on the back of the card, they scan that, there's a little form that they fill out online, automatically directs Whatever the issue is with that tenant to one of our attorneys. And we have a twenty-four hour turnaround ⁓ to the tenant ⁓ with whatever their issue is. ⁓ and in that, what we do is we're communicating the entire time with the property. ⁓ if we could de-escalate it, we will de-escalate it if there is some sort of work product that needs to come before just jumping in and getting the work product done. We will ask permission to to get that work product done and and guide you through what steps we're going to take to get things done. Now, that's an extreme example. But it can be used for things just like an ESA. ⁓ somebody's in a car accident, all of a sudden now they need an emotional support animal, they get their doctor's note. Instead of kind of going through that, you could just direct them to the concierge service. They'll send in all the documentation to us. We can make the assessment, let the property know the decision we've made, and then let the tenant know as well. ⁓ you know, it can save a lot of face with the on site teams to not have to deal with any of the upset that that can come from a legal determination. So We're pretty excited to to launch that ultimately, I think. And it's gonna be a flat fee service, correct? Correct. Yeah. And so it'll be a flat fee service. What's included in the service, just some of the features, is obviously the, you know, the tenants can reach out to us and we will handle that. But also it it's extended to the on-site teams as well, regionals. ⁓ they could reach out to us ⁓ if they're on the service and any of the questions that we answer through that. It's just included in the in the fee. So we're pretty excited. We think it'll really kind of streamline things and and ultimately resolve a lot of tension on property for the ⁓ the on-site teams. ⁓ our sixth service category really dives into regulatory and compliance issues. I'll give an example. It's not necessarily regulatory or compliance, it's more judicial by nature, but you know, sometimes a judge will look at a decision and say, Hey, this case law allows me to do X, Y, and Z in my court. If it's not in favor and or helpful to our clients, you know, really what we want to do is say, Hey, we have a case here that we feel is worth appealing. And we really wanna see if we can kind of push things along. And this ultimately helps the entire industry, not just not just our client, but you know, taking on some of these more advanced cases, doing more appeals work is really something that that we wanna dive into to really kind of help shape the legal landscape. You had one just recently here in Arizona with the CARES Act now, so I did, yeah. So we had a a case that went up on appeal. It was ⁓ more along the same lines as we've seen. It's ⁓ you know, the defendants are appealing based on the CARES Act, stating that, you know, we have to wait three days to file the eviction, not just wait three days for the writ. In Maricopa County, over and over again, the Superior Court has said no, you don't have to wait to file, you just have to wait for the writ. They reaffirmed that again, and then the Court of Appeals went even further ⁓ recently. ⁓ saying that the way they read the CARES Act is that it only applied during the moratorium. ⁓ and so it no longer applies. And ⁓ we don't do we even have to do thirty day notices anymore that we can move forward with just a five day notice and don't have to worry about it. So those were big wins. Correct. ⁓ the Court of Appeals case was not a Scott Clark law case. ⁓ the Superior Court case was. I just want to full ⁓ full disclosure. Yep. And then our final service category is strategic asset protection. And so that really dives into the realm of creating the entities essentially that protect the properties or the assets. ⁓ and so that's kind of a full service or a full thirty thousand foot view of, you know, essentially everything that we hope to provide as far as services to our clients. ⁓ I'm I'm pretty excited for this launch. I mean We've already kind of soft launched it. I mean, we're doing everything now for if it's related to the business of, you know, a property management company or an asset management company, we're pretty much handling it. I know we have several attorneys that are handling employment law matters, which ⁓ is pretty pretty good. ⁓ we had an incident ⁓ yesterday where Homeland Security was involved on site. And so we were able to to mitigate that situation. So we're we're diving in, we're taking on a lot more. Sophisticated cases ⁓ than just the evictions. Obviously, we're we're still always going to be, you know, you know, in this and and here to make sure that that end of the process is always good for our clients, but you know, we're we're still trying to to up the ante and and again just be truly a full service real estate firm, right? I remember when I came to the firm years ago, our website said, you know, we're a full service real estate firm. That serves the multifamily industry. And then I'm like, okay, cool. What does that mean? And then I we get to it and we're like, ⁓ we're pretty much just doing evictions all the time. So, ⁓ you know, that and that goes back to the conversation that I had with Scott, which was ultimately like, all right, well, you know, it says that we're full service. What does that mean to you? And and this is ultimately the ⁓ the end result of of that conversation and and what it means to truly be, you know, a full service real estate firm. And then with that, kind of just building to a a regional, you know, powerhouse within it. So I'm pretty excited for it. ⁓ I really am. So I think we have a good leadership team. I agree. You know, and in the coming episodes everybody will get to to meet everyone. So I'm I'm really excited for that. ⁓ so yeah. That's all I got from me. All right. Well thanks. ⁓ thank you for everyone who Joined us today and I hope you guys have a good estriver week. Thanks for joining us on Property Law at Scale. For more resources and to connect with our team, visit ScotClarklaw.com. We'll see you on the next episode.