Just over a month ago, I e-mailed a highly recommended labor law attorney an informative message about a potential case I wanted to discuss with him. The attorney was very responsive and offered a free initial consultation (30 minutes) and I was told I would be charged his hourly rate thereafter. After the free consultation, I paid a deposit worth several hours of the attorney's time which were to be used for his researching and determining whether I had a valid case.

Since that time, I have contacted his office several times but nobody can tell me the status of the case, what the attorney discovered, or whether he has even actually worked on the case at all. His office won't respond to my e-mails and when I call, the secretary simply tells me the attorney is going to call and inform me of what's happening.

Well, I had enough of this and yesterday e-mailed them and told them I was no longer interested in using their services. I also requested that they refund my deposit. As usual, nobody responded to my e-mail so I'm going to call them and get to the bottom of this.

Do I have any recourse if they refuse to refund my deposit? All indications lead me to believe he hasn't invested one minute of his time to my case and I'm worried he'll finally tell me something about my case now that I don't want to use his services - and then refuse to refund my deposit.

Any advice from people savvy on such matters would be much appreciated.

Coastie

 

Tell him you're report him to the state board. long story short that scares them most the time if they aren't really doing their job.

 

Lesson to be learned: Don't use e-mail for legal matters.

 

Cant give you advice, but can give you a life lesson tip.....

Any lawyer that does FREE anything, (consultations, etc) is a sham. They are not good lawyers, and are crooks.

 

 

Sue him.

 

Report him, then sue him and then get him disbarred.

 

For what?

 

It's customary for most professional services (lawyers, CPAs, etc...) to give out free consultations before you sign on. Yes, the really good ones do this too. You'd usually save yourself a lot of headache and aren't contracted if you don't mesh personally or don't have a case. Who knows what's going on in this case but to make a blanket statement like that is kneejerk reactionary at best.

 

Good news, I FINALLY was able to talk to this attorney today and he agreed to refund my deposit. He did initially say that he wouldn't refund the deposit in full because we had met and talked about the case before I paid the deposit. I then reminded him that he had stated the initial, thirty minute consultation was free, and he agreed.

My impression of everything is that this guy was extremely busy and, by his own admission, was in the middle of a trial. But that doesn't excuse his firm's actions of completely ignoring and forgetting about my case and refusing to touch bases with me. That is what really ticks me off.

When I called them this morning, I wasn't expecting to be able to talk to the attorney himself (as before) and was simply going to tell them they had by the end of business today to contact me or I was going to file a grievance against him the local bar association. I'm glad it didn't come to that.

Oh well, lesson learned.