For some Florida residents, the price of getting out of foreclosure will include taking on a second mortgage - payable this time to their lawyers.

The new mortgage, which takes effect only if the foreclosure is dismissed and the homeowner's debt to the bank is reduced, is controversial among defense lawyers, some of whom call it "creepy" and "crass." They acknowledge, though, that it offers a solution to a vexing question: How do they get paid?

After recent revelations that banks were sloppy in processing many foreclosures and in some cases lack standing to seize a house, potential clients seeking to challenge their lenders are flocking to lawyers. While these distressed homeowners might have a case, they generally lack the resources to pay legal fees because being in foreclosure usually means being broke.

"We thought, "Why don't we use a bit of ingenuity to find an affordable way to represent them?"' said Peter Ticktin of the Ticktin Law Group in Deerfield Beach, Fla. "It's a new model, a new paradigm."

Foreclosure defense is a new legal specialty whose strategies and techniques are still being worked out. Ticktin, who has about 3,000 foreclosure clients, says his plan to collect fees by taking another mortgage on his clients' properties has already been copied by other firms.

The Ticktin mortgages resemble the loans that the clients originally got from Countrywide, GMAC and other lenders. Each will be a contractual obligation with the law firm, labeled as a mortgage and structured like one, too, with the client paying a certain sum every month and using the house as collateral.

Unconventional payment structures are becoming popular in the foreclosure hotbed of Florida. Whether they yet have caught on elsewhere is unclear. Certainly, Ticktin is far from the only lawyer being forced to innovate.

Other lawyers said they were still puzzling over how to proceed. Roy Oppenheim is a veteran foreclosure defense lawyer, which means he has been doing it two years.

"Until recently, foreclosure defense would have been considered the lowest of the low - below the divorce guys, below ambulance chasers," said Oppenheim, who practices in Weston, Fla. "The idea was inconceivable that you might have legitimate defenses when your client did not pay the bank that had lent them a sum of money."

Then foreclosure lawyers started deposing bank employees, who admitted that their behavior in preparing court documents was negligent. That was quickly followed this fall by freezes imposed by some of the lenders. All 50 state attorneys general have joined forces to investigate and reshape banks' foreclosure practices.

Counting on clients to shoulder a large legal bill after the case is over can be fraught with conflicts, said Thomas E. Ice, a Royal Palm Beach lawyer.

"It's touchy," the lawyer said. "I don't ever want to have a client say, "I'm not taking the deal because I can't afford to pay you."'