Five Questions: Mark Fletcher

Q: What is your professional background?

A: I came to Springfield (in 1998) and started to work at what was then Miller & Sanford. I started working for Mark Powell, who’s now a judge. We were a smaller firm – we had seven or eight people – so I did any kind of litigation that came down the pike. We merged with Lathrop & Gage in 2000. While I still do some general litigation, I focus more on business litigation, construction litigation, a lot of work on foreclosure of security interests in real property, loan enforcement and collection work for banks.

Q: How did you get into law?

A: I graduated from University of Missouri in 1990 and went into the Marines – I was an artillery officer in the Marine Corps. When I was getting ready to get out, I came to the obvious conclusion that there wasn’t much need for an artillery officer in a civilian field or (for) someone who knew how to aim a cannon and shoot a large projectile at a target – and most of that work’s not legal.

But one of the duties as an officer was to conduct legal investigations when accidents occur. I was involved in a couple of those, and I found it interesting. I sat on a number of court-martial boards, and when I was commanding officer of our battery, I had what’s called nonjudicial punishment authority, where I sat as a judge on smaller infractions that don’t require a court martial. So I decided to go to law school.

Q: With your focus on commercial litigation, have you seen an increase in workload due to the recent increase in foreclosures?

A: Yes, especially doing a lot of work for Great Southern Bank. We’re seeing a lot more problems with loans, a lot more mechanic’s liens being filed against property (and) contractors not being paid. There’s been a big increase in the legal work being generated because of the decline in housing – a lot more foreclosures, a lot more deficiencies, a lot more claims being made against banks by buyers who can’t pay their loans, by people in an effort to get out from under a note by saying that the bank loaned them too much or didn’t loan them enough.

Q: Do you expect the busy foreclosure market to continue?

A: I see it continuing, especially for us in the legal field. There’s usually a lag of anywhere from six months to a year from where the problems are occurring for either the lender or the borrower before it reaches the litigation stage. Most banks will give people quite a bit of grace period before they foreclose – the last thing a bank wants to do is take back a property in a depressed market. Our profession is just now starting to see the tip of the iceberg.

Q: What are your favorite types of cases?

A: I like doing – and I don’t do much of it because it’s cyclical – property tax appeals. I did quite a bit of that a few years ago. It’s always interested me because my practice focuses on business and real estate, and that’s one area I like – anything from businesses getting an assessment on (their) property to individual homeowners feeling that their assessment is too high.