This is the first of two reviews. I'm posting my complaint letter sent directly to Henley and Henley.
Dear ADMIN NAME (I do not want to share specific names),
As we discussed I will enumerate the chronology that led us to this complaint and request for a refund.
On Sept 2nd, I contacted Henly & Henly to request assistance with our legal issue (changed for confidentiality).
I outlined what had happened and what the outcome was as described below.
On August 25th, a couple in our hotel had made harassing statements to us.
When we confronted them, they called the police (who was on premises for duty).
While speaking with the Police, they offered to allow us to remain in the hotel and transfer to a different room on a different floor.
we stated that if they needed to arrest her, they should just do so and be done with it.
The entire process was without incident, without coercion, she went on principle. The police were very cordial and understanding.
In my initial discussion with LAWYER NAME, I stated very clearly that we had requested to be arrested on principle and we did not have a case to dispute.
Our goals were simple enough:
We did not want to go to court
We wanted to request leniency and pay whatever fine
We wanted to negotiate a deferred adjudication and possible expungement from her record.
She has no arrests, no speeding tickets, and has never been in trouble with the law.
LAWYER NAME requested $1,000 and stated that he would take care of it and fight to ensure the arrest was expunged.
LAWYER NAME stated repeatedly that we "NEEDED" to be in court on the 11th and we should prepare for that and a possible judgement.
LAWYER NAME told us that we may need to do community service and pay a fine (this served only to frighten her and cause us concern)
After discussions with my neighbor (an Austin police officer), he stated that a PI is no more than a minor class C misdemeanor!
I think the scare factor of community service was excessive and we determined that LAWYER NAME may not have our best interests at heart.
Reasoning:
We repeatedly stated we did not want to dispute or go to court
We repeatedly stated we wanted deferred adjudication and expungement
The dialog with LAWYER NAME was cavalier at best, and bordered on "Cookie-Cutter" representation (the clients needs were irrelevant)
We determined we would hire a new lawyer
On September 6th, we notified LAWYER NAME that we no longer wanted his representation and that we had hired another attorney.
Specifically, I sent a text message requesting a withdrawal
You can see the subtleties in the dialog in the text below. LAWYER NAME states that he's spoken with the court and they should be hearing back on whether or not we need to travel to Dallas on the 11th.
Understand that we have been requesting not to go to court, and repeatedly he states we must be there. This gives us little time to reserve a hotel, which we never needed to do; I'll explain below...
Instead of processing our request on the 6th, I had to reiterate the withdrawal request on the 10th!
As you can see from the text below, I had repeatedly asked for the motion to be submitted, and now we are fast approaching the 11th (scheduled court date).
We retained another law firm
They have stated that everything we wanted is what they do.
They will move the court date and we should not even have to go to court
They will attempt to negotiate a deferred adjudication and expungement after a customary 90 day probation period
They charged $250 as this is a normal process when the client has no priors and no desire to dispute.
LAWYER NAME's words when I told him this on Friday "THE OTHER LAW FIRM IS LYING TO YOU" his words... not mine!
On Monday LAWYER NAME called and stated that he checked with the courthouse, and confirmed that should we decide to stay with Henly & Henly he could do the same process!
After all of that work, and LAWYER NAME calling the other firm liars, he concedes this is a simple process and he can do the same!
Balderdash! this is insane... Why would we trust a person that is so out of touch (or misrepresenting) of the process; WHEN the only reason he's changed his tune is because we had to do the research and find out our "Legal Advisor" was ill-advisedly telling us something that is completely contrary to our stated requests and needs.
September 11th
I'm now so angry I am sending this letter!
I called Priscilla at the courthouse 972.721.3578 at precisely 10:09 AM and she stated that there was still no motion to withdrawal... Still!
I then asked her for the fax number 972.721.4767
Much to my surprise, the fax number that was used by LAWYER NAME was 972.721.2750!
Priscilla stated that's not even a fax number for the courthouse!
I then faxed our copy of the Motion on 10:25 to ensure it was done so we could move forward
Demonstrable incompetence or malfeasance! how could a law firm send the motion to withdrawal to an arbitrary number?! read more