When Cook County Circuit Judge Michael T. Mullen began hearing mortgage foreclosure cases early last year, he didn’t know much about the caseload he was about to handle. “The only background is what I read in the newspapers and the financial magazines about the mortgage foreclosure process and crisis,” he said. But “it’s all dependent on civil procedure and, of course, I had 25 years of experience in that.” When Mullen started presiding over a mortgage foreclosure and mechanic …