Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

You do not make all of the facts of your situation clear to me, so I will have to give some general responses.

It would be a violation of the State Basr rules for the attorney to lend you money in return to his getting a lien against the proprety involved in the litigation. Contact the State Bar Association to confirm that and to report the attorney's violation [you will have to file a complaint against the attorney, but before you do that, tell the attorney what the Bar said and ask him what he/she will do to remedy the violation]. An attorney is not supposed to have a personal economic interest in the litigation.

If hourly rate $400, then attorney would have had to put in 1,000 hours; at 8 hours per day, that is about 1/3 of a year. I would doubt the case was so complicated and time consuming. Normally you can file a fee dispute claim with the local county bar association, but only if there is no other suit existing as to the fee claim; so if you have sued him for malpractice you can not use that relatively simple avenue of redress. But overcharging not malpractice as does not go to the winning of your case or reducing/increasing damages unless you claim negligent in number of hours actually spent on the file.

I doubt that your lawyer will refund anything to you without your having to hire another lawyer. So it becomes a vicious circle for you; also, it seems that the underlying case as to the easement has not yet been resolved.

Ask your attorney for proof of his malpractice insurance if he has any and a free copy of everything in your file including his time sheets, notes, evidence of work done, etc. It is your file and he should not charge you for a copy of it, although he will try to do so. Go through the court's file [some courts you can go to their web site and see without charge a copy of everything filed in the case]. Then you should prepare a summary of what the case is about, what appearances have been made and what occurred [including how many times your attorney asked for the matter to be continued or did not timely file required papers], how many hours of work lhe has proof of, status of case, loan note, etc. Your will need somethling like that for the State Bar and to retain another attorney to represent you on the case.

I am sorry for the problems you have had with the legal system. You need to question what is being done and not be passive when such large sums of money are involved. It may still cost you a large amount of attorney fees to resolve the matter and your current attorney may have no assets you can successfully go against.

Can he? Yes. Is he justified in doing so? I don't know from your facts. If you think he has charged too much, you should pointedly discuss with him the detailed billing statements to determine the answer. If you and he can't reach agreement, then you could file a 'fee dispute' with the local Bar Association. They will appoint an arbitrator to hear the facts and arguments and issue a ruling on your claim. You are entitled to hire and have separate counsel in that process. You should get a second opinion on this problem before taking any action. If serious about doing either of those, feel free to contact me.