In my opinion this law firm practices unfair billing & uprofessional practices. I hired Amaral & Associates for a simple divorce: no kids, no large assets.
A) Billing Practices: They represented me for 4 months & charged me close to $30K. Few examples: Billing included charges for scanning docs ( very expensive). In addition, the law firm was inattentive with documents I had sent them via USPS with tracker. I would receive emails about sending documents I had already sent, which would then make me reply to them with proof & explanations .I would then get billed for additional correspondence for no fault of mine. Emails correspondence would then be billed as hours of correspondence.
B) Lack of Financial & Accounting Knowhow: One of the most important aspect of a divorce, in my opinion, is not a lawyer who knows how to work the system ( submitting motions, counter-motions etc). In a probate court, I believe procedural lawyers don't matter. Everything , in my opinion, boils down to negotiating divorce settlement for which, in mu opinion, the lawyer should have at least a basic knowledge of Math, Finance & Accounting. The law firm I believe is not good at it. For example, if you are going to ask your client to take the retirement account instead of the house, the lawyer should at the least know different types of retirement account, pros&cons of 401(K) vs 403(B). That was not the case here.
C) Misrepresenting Final Cost of Case: When I was billed over $10k in a month, I emailed them stating very clearly, that I was not going to afford this type of payments. I also stated that since the assets were not large spending this type of money made no sense to me. ( Email sent to them is on file with me.) They asked me to call them up made what I believe to a verbal contract with me stating that the case was almost done & at the most there was 20 hours left. When I pushed them to give me an amount, they stated falsely, that it would be around $7,000. The total bill should have been $17k. But the final total bill was close to $30,000.
D) Reporting me to credit agency - After my divorce settlement, I had three months to remortgage from date of settlement or else I had to sell the house. During this time I was sent $9,000 bill. By this time I had already paid close to $20,,000 to this law firm. I sent them a mail ( USPS as I had been advised) disputing their amount. In it I stated, that I was told the entire case would be complete amounting to additional $7,000 , which I had paid& I needed time to look at the bill carefully & get back to them. However they started to harass me to pay the money by emailing me threatening to report me to credit rating agency, if I didn't pay. This before the 3 months given to me by he courts to refinance the house. The bill sent to be after settlement agreement ,was not even 90 days overdue when they reported me to credit agency. I have evidence of the exact date because I use credit karma to check my scores regularly. My mortgage had been approved by then. Amaral & Associates name in on the credit agency derogatory remark section. I believe they violated their professional standards by reporting me to credit agency which in turn led to steep decline in my credit score, which in turn would have affected my right to refinance. ABA claims such measures to be punitive. If I was not able to take out a mortgage I would have to sell the house. My credit score has been affected so badly my student loan refinance attempt has been rejected due to derogatory comment & getting credit cards with good interest rates has been difficult.
E) Sending Collection Agency Lawyers Against Me: After that incident, they got their debt collection lawyer pals to start harassing me with threatening letters of lawsuit , phone calls & brought a lawsuit. At this point, I borrowed money & settled the case. After settling I sent an email to their debt lawyer to remove the derogatory remark on my credit report. It's no action has been taken or response provided until today. read more
