I was referred to this attorney by my employer through the CLC Legal Access Program.
I talked to him over the phone, and since he said he was in court the other days, we made an appointment for Sunday 10 a.m.--I thought it a little odd that he'd propose Sunday, but whatever.
Sunday, I went all the way across town on the Metro, which is about an hour and a half. His office building was basically next door to the Court House stop, and since it was pouring outside, I said a silent "thanks" for how convenient it was. But...
...it was locked. Nobody home. I'd arrived half an hour early, so I stood outside for a while in the pouring rain. I phoned his office repeatedly, with no answer. At 10:15 when he hadn't showed, I finally called security using the phone outside. The guard came and told me I could sit in the coffee shop next door--but he also told me "you ought to know that that particular attorney very often makes appointments on Sunday and then doesn't show." I waited till 10:45, and then got on the Metro and went back home.
While standing out there in the rain, I probably left five voicemails on Mr. Devita's machine. I would have thought someone on his staff would have gotten back to me the following day to explain why he'd stood me up, to reschedule, or just to apologize. But nobody did. At that point, I was pretty upset. I called and asked to speak to Mr. Devita.
I asked Mr. Devita why he hadn't shown up. He told me he needed to cancel but he had deleted the voice mail with my name and phone number. I responded that he had all of that information in his e-mail. He didn't really have an answer to that. I added that even if he'd totally lost all of the scheduling information about my appointment, he could have at least bothered to leave a note on the door saying he wouldn't be there. That way I'd still have wasted the time it took to go out there, but I wouldn't have had to stand out in the rain for an hour, wondering if he was going to show up.
Anyway he apologized and I decided that it was not worth arguing with him further. Yes, he'd behaved unprofessionally, but telling him that wasn't going to bring back my lost Sunday or get my legal work done. So I stopped, and just asked him what forms I'd need to file for the legal procedure I wanted to hire him for. (I knew I could find that information in 0.1 seconds via Google, but I wanted to see what he'd be like as an attorney.) Mr. DeVita gave me a cagey reply that he couldn't answer my question unless I hired him, since the forms were his work product.
That was the point at which I decided not to hire him.
I called another attorney. That attorney returned my call immediately. He happily answered the simple question that Mr. Devita had refused to. I hired him instead, and gave him the few thousand dollars of business that I would otherwise have given to Mr. Devita. read more