Maybe it’s already online somewhere?

I would spend the money and hire legal counsel to make sure you are doing it correctly.

For a $50k loan it may not be worth to spend money on legal fees especially if you think that loan will be paid off soon due to maturity date.Why don't you find a new money for your borrower so he can refinance and pay you off .

I did look him up online and i think i have the right contact info. 

It said they expect demand for apartment rentals to ease in the next 12-18 months as all the new builds come online.

The trouble that I'm finding right now is that I want to practice in an area of the law that is unrelated to real estate, so I don't necessarily know if I can merge my legal career with my real estate investments.

Contact an asset protection lawyer (It doesn't seem hard to open a single LLC by myself online but I imagine it would be difficult to get much past this without some professional help?)

Plus if I'm doing online research/purchasing material online.. add another 10 hours/week on top of that. 

Then I tried to contact the attorney, but of course they legally cannot give me any information.

No cell phones, no texts, no online portals and rent payments, no electronic signatures, some email, newspaper ads and a lot of door knocking (I can almost feel some of you more seasoned PM vets nodding out there).