I am not at all pleased with services of lawyer Mary Richter (see website http://richter-law.ca),…read morewho was recommended by a banker then managing the wealth of aged parents following the sale of their Kitsilano home. He was recently downsized/retired rather sooner than he would have liked - probably for the best, in my view. Thanks for nothing.
Ms. Richter was retained to update the wills - a fairly simple job as parents had no stock portfolios or other complicated holdings or second families to worry about - yet somehow an error was made identifying one beneficiary. Sloppy drafting - not that big a deal, right? However, rather than visit their care facility to own and correct her error, Ms. Richter summoned at her pleasure fragile, aged ps to her office, a huge, unnecessary inconvenience especially in view of Cadillac pricing of many hundred dollars an hour. Quaere whether parents may even have been billed for the time taken to correct the error.
That was bad enough.
More recently, ancient forebears asked Ms. Richter to inquire into the possibility of burial plots deceased father-in-law may have purchased for his wife and daughter at a local cemetery. A fairly simple matter, one would have thought, but Ms. Richter was disinclined to stir her lazy stumps. She didn't want the work even after ancients expressed willingness to pay to end the nagging uncertainty. Because burial plots today represent considerable real estate assets, we found this a most irksome, unsatisfactory response. Frankly, it cast doubt on Ms. Richter's efforts such that I have now suggested the file be referred to a competitor, someone who proofreads his work and considers the wishes and frailties of his clients, someone with a more enlightened approach and commitment to service.
i wish parents could have paid an earnest law student instead to do the work at a fraction of the cost and inconvenience, but the Law Society of British Columbia won't allow even graduates to charge for services until they have: 1) articled a year with one of the only about three firms big enough to offer such positions, 2) re-completed law school from a six-week refresher make-work course and 3) passed a bar exam re-examining the already examined materials studied over three years at law school. Maverick young Ontario lawyers recently made a pitch to end such medieval nonsense as have some of their counterparts in the U.S. but lawyers so far maintain a tenacious grip on who can charge for services.
The monopoly lawyers impose on us is nothing more than a determined effort to restrict trade in order to protect outrageous, utterly undeserved fees, which have in turn created an access to justice crisis just about everywhere. Nor does the lawyers' regulating body in ANY jurisdiction do much, if anything, to protect the public contrary to their lofty promises.
Happily, the second machine age now very much upon us will soon replace these ancient, rusted has-beens with software that will do the work faster, better and cheaper. I also understand that one may contract for the drafting and litigation of a will with a freelancer at Elance, a virtual law office of some renown where clients are not expected to subsidize a high-end downtown or, in Ms. Richter's case, Kerrisdale rent.
