by Kent Jennings Brockwell
Staff Writer
It’s no news that personal debt is a festering problem in this country, but one local attorney is trying educate the masses about the dangers of bad credit before they have a chance to accrue large amounts of debt themselves.
For the past six months, Jacksonville Area Legal Aid attorney April Charney has been researching and developing a financial literacy program that she wants to implement and have taught to students in Duval County beginning this fall.
But Charney doesn’t want the program to be taught by Duval County teachers or credit counselors - she wants to gather and dispatch “an army of lawyers” to teach students about their economic health.
“Every lawyer, if they have managed to make it through law school and passed the bar and are working, already has the tools it takes to do this kind of training,” Charney said. “I am convinced this is the way to turn off the spigot of victimized consumers.”
Charney’s program will consist of lawyers going into schools to teach a wide variety of economic life skills ranging from how to read a contract to information about predatory lenders. She said programs can be designed to suit the different needs of the students depending on their grade level and different economic factors in their individual communities.
“I want to leave it flexible enough so the lawyer and the teacher and students can get together to figure out what their needs are are,” she said.
For example, if a certain school is in a neighborhood with a large number of “pay day” lenders or rent-to-own stores, Charney said the program could be customized to teach students about the high interest rates and other information pertaining to such predatory lenders. For high school students about to enter the working world, she said the program might consist of precautions to take when buying a car or signing a lease.
“All kids need this kind of financial literacy training,” Charney said. “There is no training or preparation like that in high school. None of that is taught and it is a huge part of everybody’s life.”
Charney said there are some programs out there that touch on financial health but most have some sort of industry slant to them. Her program is different because it will have lawyers teaching instead of a debt counselor who probably doesn’t have a legal background.
“Unfortunately, what is starting to happen is that non-lawyers are going in the schools and the communities and trying to teach consumer literacy, but it is such a sophisticated world out there that you very quickly get to a very complicated layer of legal analysis,” she said.
“The folks who are doing this consumer credit counseling don’t have the power to do it because they are not lawyers. If they try to do it they are treading on the unlicensed practice of law and I think that is very disingenuous when it comes to the consumer.”
On her desk, Charney has a stack of papers, newspaper clippings and booklets more than a foot high about different financial literacy programs and movements around the country.
When implemented, Charney’s program will be added to the approximately 35 other credit abuse resistance education programs, or C.A.R.E. programs, around the country.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury is also trying to come up with a national program for financial literacy but Charney said her program will be unique and very effective due to the lawyers-as-teachers factor.
“I am convinced that it is not so much the curriculum that you come up with as the lawyer going in and teaching it,” she said. “Only good can come from lawyers going into the schools and teaching our kids how to become financially literate.
“And to do that you are essentially working hand in glove with any other system that is already in place to teach kids how to read or write. Financial literacy needs to be right up there with all of that especially since this is becoming such a complicated world.”
Charney said she has not officially spoken with the Duval County School Board about her program but anticipates that it will be accepted with open arms.
She is currently still working on developing a curriculum and building up her “army of lawyers” that will go out to teach. So far Charney has asked the Jacksonville Bankruptcy Bar Association members for assistance and she plans to solicit help from other bar associations and large private firms.
Mamie Davis, Chapter 13 trustee and current JBBA president, said she is very supportive of the program.
Davis, who sees about 400 new bankruptcy cases each month, said she thinks the program will have a great effect because the lawyers will be teaching important financial skills to students that are about to enter the real world of contracts, credit cards and lease agreements.
“Financial literacy is a process that needs to start really early,” Davis said. “A person having this knowledge won’t get themselves into bad situations (regarding credit).”
For more information about the program, call Charney at 356-8371.