As you can see an attorney, licensed to practice law in FEDERAL court will need to be engaged.

I am the Community Engagement Specialist for BiggerPockets as well as a DFW local investor.

On BiggerPockets - Ifound suggestion for a real estate attorney who also provided Title/Closing services.So I decided to engage with this attorney referred on BiggerPockets assuming ifsomeone here referred, it must be legit.

I'm the Community Engagement Specialist for BiggerPockets and a local DFW investor.

Many will try - they just have to have a competing offer so they can't be accused of engaging in discriminatory lending. 

Aside from the usual advice about reading every real estate book you can get your hands on, engaging on BP, and connecting with local investors who are where you hope to be in 5-10 years, I think your next step is to decide on what asset class you want to invest in and where.

Are there any other categories of people we should be engaging with who would be important not to forget? 

My hope is to connect with some of the investors in, or around Wilmington  NC to come along side and learn the ropes of investing in this area.

Perhaps my property manager might be interested in investing alongside me :)Scott

If your thinking of purchasing a NPN, whose current lender does not have the original Note, you will most definitely want to engage an attorney to find out what liabilities you could inadvertently assume by buying such a note.