She’s a consumer law attorney for Jacksonville Area Legal Aid and specializes in property foreclosure defense.
Career
Right after law school, Charney practiced with Greater Orlando Legal Services. She then moved to Arkansas where she was in private practice for a few years before moving to Sarasota, where she lived for 13 years and worked again in legal aid at Gulf Coast Legal Services. She moved to Jacksonville in February 2004, mainly because her two children were enrolled at the University of Florida. “It was a long drive from Sarasota to go and visit them and now I see them all the time,” she said.
Education
Miami Dade Junior College
Florida International University, B.A. Political Science
University of Miami, J.D.
Hobbies
Rock climbing at Gainesville Rocks in Gainesville.
Children
Katherine Isaacs, 22, and Morgan Isaacs, 20. Katherine is a recent graduate of UF and Morgan is going into his third year at UF.
Why Jacksonville?
“My office (in Sarasota) lost a lot of funding so I was laid off. At that point I was looking for work and I got several offers, this being one of them. I was actually surprised to see that at least among the legal services world there was great interest here in the kind of work I had done and they specialized in defending foreclosures and doing property law work. (JALA attorney) Lynn (Drysdale) and I basically tracked each other’s paths all of these years. I have great admiration and appreciation for her work.”
Specialties?
“I defend foreclosures, sub-prime lending issues, equity skimming, property flipping, truth in lending violations, credit card debt collection issues, bankruptcy issues, anything that would impact a family’s ability to keep themselves employed and keep a house over their heads and keep their wages in their pockets.”
Why this area of law?
“The need. When I started doing legal services work in Sarasota foreclosures were few to come in the door. As sub prime lending increased in the 90s, it flooded every legal services office. We were absolutely flooded with foreclosures.”
Biggest issue?
“Lack of financial literacy. Financial literacy equates to consumer power and many consumers are essentially financially illiterate. We don’t teach it in any of the schools. That is the biggest obstacle to maintaining home ownership. Whether you are poor or you are rich, if you are not literate financially, you don’t have the power to take care of yourself.”
What she wants
you to know about her
“How strongly I feel about these issues. The most important thing I want to give to this community and get known for is how passionate I am about this work.”
— Kent Jennings Brockwell