| At home on a Bayou or a Canadian mountain, a variety of experiences led attorney to success
Marx Sterbcow, a true “Louisiana boy,” was born and raised in New Orleans, went away for graduate school, and came home to become a successful attorney specializing in Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA) law.
 “Louisiana is as close to going to Europe as you can get without having to cross the Atlantic,” he said. “You have a little Caribbean influence, the music, the food. It’s a different culture. It’s not like going to Houston or Dallas where everything is new with big box retailers. It’s a very localized community.”
Marx is involved in countless professional organizations close to home and across the country. He’s on the board of directors for the Louisiana Land Title Association, vice president of the New Orleans Metropolitan Association of Title Attorneys and a member of the Louisiana Bar Association along with the Federal Bar and American Bar Association. He is an active member in the Mortgage Bankers Association and the National Association of Mortgage Professionals and, especially the Real Estate Services Providers Council (RESPRO).
“I’m most involved in RESPRO,” Marx said. “I’m on the membership board, regulatory committee, state issues committee and education committee. It’s an area of expertise. I’ve been a member since 2003. At one point, my dad, Arthur Sterbcow, was president of the organization. I know everybody there. It’s almost like family.”
Although a licensed notary public and title agent in Louisiana, Marx doesn’t do many closings anymore. He said he enjoys the compliance side of the business and loves to help his clients in the business to stay in business.
His career began when he started attending Tulane University in New Orleans to receive his bachelor’s degree. At the same time he was receiving two educations — one from school and another from his job as assistant manager at the famous Pat O’Brien’s.
“I was attending Tulane during the day and working at Pat O’s at night,” Marx said. “It was a true education. You learn how to talk to anybody and everybody because you dealt with the lowest common denominator to the highest common denominator. You were really able to hone your people skills and learn how to deal with people. I think that was a really good education for me. I was there between 1991 and 1994. You saw everything, all kinds of crazy stuff. I would go to school from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and start working at 8 p.m. until about 4 a.m. It was very difficult. Every single night there was a line down the block to get in.”
Once he graduated, he was offered a scholarship to Gonzaga University School of Law in Spokane, Wash. One of his professors, Milton Rowland, was also a Spokane City Attorney and asked Marx to work for him and get some experience on eminent domain cases involving the city.
“It was a great experience,” Marx said. “I worked with him on several eminent domain trials, which was unique and fun. At the time, these were big cases for Spokane. After your second year in law school in Washington, you can become a Rule 9 attorney, which is basically a clerk. It means you can work as an attorney under the supervision of another attorney. We prosecuted cases from start to finish.”
He was assigned to the domestic violence unit, one of two courts in the nation at the time specializing in domestic violence cases. He said he was one of the only men in the unit. He saw some brutal domestic violence cases and others that just made him ask, “What were you thinking?”
“I think my first case was in the domestic violence unit,” Marx said. “There was this really nice old guy and he was looking for companionship. His wife had passed away and he found a new wife a few months later. He bought her a new Cadillac. As it turned out, she was fooling around on the poor guy. Distraught and not thinking rationally he took a can of gasoline, doused the Cadillac and set it on fire. Unfortunately, it was in the garage and when he lit it, it burned down his whole house. I think we ended up dismissing him on probation. The poor guy lost everything.”
 After Spokane, he traveled to Chicago where he earned his Masters of Law (LLM) in Real Estate Law from the John Marshall Law School. Marx said the professors were the best of the best and included partners in some of the largest, publically traded corporations in the country. Instead of a traditional academic model, this program was based in the practice of real estate law. He said, “it was the best decision he ever made in his entire life and the best degree he could ever imagine himself getting.”
He then was able to start his own firm, the Sterbcow Law Group LLC, and open offices in Seattle, Miami, Chicago and his hometown of New Orleans. While he was running his firm, he was helping his father improve his business.
“Essential Title was part of Latter and Blum and at the time my father was president and co-owner,” Marx said. “He asked me, when I came back to New Orleans, if I would help him create a transaction management system that would make the entire brokerage paperless along with the property and casualty operation we had. We went paperless in late 2004, right before Hurricane Katrina. It was the first real estate brokerage in the country to do it. We also introduced the first voice over IP (VOIP) phone system in a real estate firm in the South. He really wanted this for disaster planning and was able to implement a lot of (processes) before Hurricane Katrina. Once it hit, we were the only real estate brokerage from the Florida state line to the Texas state line with online document access. We never went down, even though we lost 28 of our 32 offices.”
Essential Title worked with ClosingSite, a title closing portal and integrated it into the transaction management system. All the consumers who had their homes flooded or burned down could log into the site and access all the records they needed. While creating the transaction management system and the disaster management plan, the title insurance side of the business was added and Marx worked on keeping the company compliant. He began to earn a reputation as an expert in keeping title insurance companies compliant with federal regulations and began receiving calls from brokerages around the country. In 2008, he left the company and focused exclusively on growing his law firm.
There are two cases Marx worked on for which he is particularly proud. In one, a client was a victim of mortgage fraud. She was a single mother with two young daughters, and her identity was stolen, along with her loan pay-off proceeds. The fraudsters would call her to scare and intimidate her by telling her they were watching her kids.
“They destroyed her credit causing this woman, who was awarded the Business Woman of the Year, into homelessness. We had to write a letter so she could rent a small room for the three of them. When the case was finally settled and the family once again moved into a home of their own, my firm and another lawyer who represented her surprised her by buying a new car for her. The look on her daughters’ faces was incredible,” he said. “It was so gratifying to help them out of that horrible situation.”
The second case was for a client who helped invent some technology.
“Several Fortune 500 companies, other large IT companies, my clients partners at the time and several New Orleans city officials conspired to steal his wireless crime camera technology and ultimately did,” Marx said. “There were numerous federal convictions directly and indirectly as a result of what they did to him and this case was part of the reason (former New Orleans Mayor) Ray Nagin was convicted. That was gratifying, to help right a wrong. The system worked.”
As he looks over the title insurance industry today, he said there are a few challenges on the horizon. Specifically, the undefined, fluctuating, tightening vendor management compliance requirements, which he said were the most underappreciated and ignored areas in the title industry right now.
“The whole way we do closings and lending is going to be significantly changing,” Marx said. “I don’t think a lot of people are ready for that or the changes that are taking place. The government is trying to get the word out to those that work in the trenches of the industry such as Realtors, title agents, banking and credit unions. The folks on the ground level aren’t getting the information. Many are not as engaged in their associations as they should be. They’re not getting the information they need to prepare for all these changes.”
The Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements (SSAE 16) and the Service Organizations Controls Report (SOC 1) quietly are becoming the standard, according to Marx. He said everyone is beginning to ask for those certifications and if you don’t have it now or aren’t working towards it customers are going to quietly stop sending business.
“Title agents have no idea why they’re not getting any more business,” Marx said. “It’s a compliance arms race. Those getting the SSAE now are going to be in a much better position than those that are waiting to be told they need to get the SSAE. It’s going to take a minimum of three months to get that certification. Most of my state and regional title agency clients either already have it or are in the process of getting it now. My law firm is being asked to produce SSAE certifications now by some of my clients because regulatory compliance law is deemed to be a critical vendor management function so this isn’t just a title industry or mortgage brokerage issue.”
He went on to say he expects a vast majority of banks in the near future to announce they’re disseminating and generating the Closing Disclosure forms themselves instead of relying on the title agent. Each lender will have their own standard and many of them will be faced with unauthorized practice of law requirements as well. Many states require attorneys to disseminate the forms. If the lenders take that task on in-house, they may be in violation of that law. However, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said its regulations will supersede any of these claims.
Throughout his career, Marx won several awards, such as the Superlawyer Rising Star award in 2012 and 2013, Top Lawyer in New Orleans in 2013 and 2014 and Top 40 under 40 in the U.S. Real Estate Industry from October Research, LLC in 2007. One award, among the many, stand out, however, and that is the Southern Women Magazine’s Top 10 People to Watch.
“I’m really embarrassed to even tell this story,” Marx said. “It was all these young folks under the age of 35. They had a pretty good list. I am the least accomplished one of them. Trombone Shorty and I were doing the photo shoot and SAKS Fifth Avenue was providing the clothes. They hand me this shirt and I said there was no way on God’s green earth I was going to wear that shirt. They said I had no option, I had to wear it. We looked like we belonged in Key West. It was really bad. I was mortified and I had put this outfit on. It was silk, pink and chartreuse with a flower pattern. My wife hasn’t even seen this picture. I went to every Rite Aid and Walgreens and bought every copy I could find. That’s how embarrassed I was.”
Off-Duty
When Marx isn’t practicing law or sharing his expertise at an industry event, the Louisiana boy loves to snowboard. While he was attending law school in Spokane, he kept a place at Nelson, British Columbia and would head up every weekend he could to go snowboarding.
 “I love it and got really good and started competing in my second year of law school,” he said. “I was the first person to be invited to compete from Louisiana in the Mount Snow contest. It’s a huge contest. There were people skipping the Olympics to compete at this event. If you’re into snowboarding, that is the pinnacle of snowboarding — if you can get into the race. There was this little kid with red hair who was about 8 or 10-years old at the time that was running around. He blew me out of the water. It was Shaun White!
“However, my favorite passions are enjoying my family and fishing. I do a tremendous amount of fishing. I’ve always been into fishing. Everything is centered around fishing for me.
He also loves his city of New Orleans -- the people, the music, the culture and, yes, the food. So, when the tourists ask what is the best place to eat in New Orleans? Marx names his three favorites: Feelings Café, GW Fins and Commander’s Palace.
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