I obtained the services of Mr. Zacchea to help with closing on my first home purchase. In total it took about 4 months to close. I feel the service I received was poor.
For the first 3.5 months I was mostly put in contact with paralegal Ramea Balachanthiran. Communication was one-directional and sparse. During those months I was the sole initiator of any contact, whether it was phone calls or email. Almost every communication started with Ramea stating something to the effect of, "Oh, I was just about to get in touch with you", yet over the entire time period she never was the one to initiate contact. Most of these phone calls or emails ended with her stating she would get back to me about a question I had asked or issue I brought up, and I would never hear back until I again reached out.
Towards the last 2 weeks of the process Mr. Zacchea did become personally involved. His frequency of communication with me was better than Ramea, but his communication towards other parties involved was lacking. At one point we were waiting on the bank's legal counsel to make a decision/provide information, and the entire process grinded to halt as we would slowly wait for them to reply. Following the advice of my realtor, I actually had to contact the bank's lawyer myself to facilitate the process to move along. I still haven an outstanding final issue after closing and the last email I exchanged with Mr. Zacchea was on August 16th, in which he stated he will be in touch about the issue. I never heard back.
Then there was the almost disaster of the actual closing, where I was told several times we might not be able to close due to errors on my attorney's end. Mr. Zacchea was out of state, so he sent a per diem lawyer. She arrived 1.5 hours late. She did not know she was also supposed to be the legal representative for the title company. Once the per diem attorney was informed she was supposed to act in this role, she admitted she did not know how to do this. Fortunately for me my real estate agent befriended the bank/lender's lawyer, who agreed to help the per diem lawyer do her job. The bank's lawyer had to sit there and explain to my lawyer what to do at almost every step. It was like watching an apprenticeship session occur before my eyes. There was another major issue that almost shut down the closing, involving certain signed documents the seller's attorney needed and had provided to Mr. Zacchea's firm to bring to the closing. The per diem lawyer did not have them and claimed she was not even told about them. To Mr. Zacchea's credit, he did get on the phone from California to assist the per diem lawyer with this process. The per diem lawyer than informed us all she was 3 hours later to another closing and had to leave. The process was not finished, but again the kind lawyer representing the bank/lender stated she would finish it for us, allowing us to finally close. Weeks after my closing, Ramea inadvertently included me in a text message chain asking this same per diem lawyer to take on more closings for them, so I know other people using O'Sullivan & Zacchea are going to have to deal with the same issues.
Throughout this 4 month process I had many people continuously comment to me that the quality of the legal service I was receiving was unacceptable. These included my real estate agent, my loan officer, my parents who have closed on several houses, and my friends who were homeowners. My real estate agent was the one who ended up advising me on most issues, answering my questions, and making phone calls on my behalf to other parties to advocate for my interests. It was only after speaking to other professionals and friends/family that I found out that it would normally be my attorney who would do these things. After closing, the bank/lender's attorney & the attorney who owned that firm were chatting with me and my real estate agent, and told me this was one of the most unprofessional closings they had ever seen and I was lucky to have closed at all.
I will note that I used job benefits to pay for these legal service. I gave Mr. Zacchea a code from my workplace's benefit website during our first telephone discussion. I do not know the arrangement of these payment agreements and/or if they affect the quality of the service I received. Perhaps me not being a regular customer paying directly changed the amount of attention my case was given.
At the end of the day I did close on the house, but the quality of the service I received was incredibly poor. Due to this the entire process was stressful, especially the closing itself. I cannot recommend this law firm read more
