By: Caryn Tamber

For my story today about lawyers getting paid slowly or not at all, I spoke to Sonya Smith-Valentine, a Greenbelt consumer rights attorney. According to Smith-Valentine’s (admittedly unscientific) analysis of what kinds of cases she is working on now, the economy’s going to get a lot better in short order.

She said the type of work she gets at any given time serves as something of a leading indicator. When things are about to get bad, she starts seeing more clients who want to get debt collectors off their backs. When the economy is about to get better, she starts getting more people who need her to help them with credit issues; they are about to make a big purchase, such as a house or car, and want to get their credit in order.

“For awhile, all my calls have been about debt issues,” Smith-Valentine told me. “They’ve started to switch back to credit issues.”