Need. Pro bono or contingency attorney

[Steve Karp]

A good friend of mine, my agent, team member and RE Agent has a challenging escrow.  Seller is a divorcing couple.  My friend reps the buyer. This is a property in escrow.  The divorce is hostile.  They went in to escrow with knowledge of a notice of default.  Supposedly the sellers had open dialogue with the bank. Surprise! The property was sold at auction the other day far below the escrowed sales price.  Buyer is now looking for a contingency fee lawyer to proceed against seller. If you know of an LA/SFV area contigency RE lawyer please let me know.  As I said, the divorce is hostile.  They're supposed to split the proceeds of the house sale.  I suspect the husband colluded with a 3rd party and his divorce lawyer to let the property go at auction.  That clears the slate whereby there's $0 to split with his soon to be ex wife. Then the person who bought it at auction sells it at fair market value and the soon to be ex husband nets the full profit.    Thank you for your recommendations.   

[Craig Kleffman]

Why would a lawyer do this pro bono? Or on contingency given how messy it is? I mean if you don't think it's worth $10-25k in fees why should a lawyer bet their fee on this in the midst of an acrimonious divorce (thankfully the county pays me for my legal experience and I can't do any other legal work. But my friends who practice in other areas are quite used to the expectation that attorneys should take all the risk even when there's a small or nonexistent pot of cash at the end of the rainbow. Basically despite the six figure cost of a law degree we should work for free. Uh-huh.