Legal Question in Family Law in Virginia
In March of 2009 my wife was accused by Child Protective Services of injuring our 4 month old child. We paid a $25,000 "Engagement attorney's fee" to a local attorney. The engagement letter advises that this will be the entire fee unless criminal charges should be brought against my wife, in which case there will be an additional fee negotiated. The $25k that we paid would be for services involved during proceedings and Investigations.
I am happy to state that my wife has been cleared of any wrongdoing and my now 11 month old son is as he was at the time she was accused both happy and healthy.
The attorney that we used was ultimately horrible and we had to write letters, make phone calls, and go directly to his office to get him to communicate with us. We requested several things from him during the course of this event and he either never did them or it took him up to 6 months to do act. He mostly pawned us off on his incompetent partner who is essentially the office receptionist. At one point he told us that he didn't take care of our requests, because he thought that this would end quickly. (We wanted him to actively prepare for an appeal should things have not gone our way). Out attempt at an appeal would have been set back by more than 6 months due to his inactivity. The entire situation lasted from March through October.
Approx. 3 months ago, we hired another attorney at the cost of $6500 to be co-council and help us out by pushing our first attorney to move faster. After spending $25k on him, I did not want to fire him and lose all of my money.
I estimate that our attorney did no more than 20-30 hours of work for this case.
The engagement letter does not state that the fee is non-refundable. Is there any consensus that I may be eligible to receive monies back from the first attorney?
1 Answer from Attorneys
As the old saw goes, "them that don't ask (usually) don't get". $25K for the kind of representation described for a CPS case that likely would've dissolved on its own accord seems absurd.
Yes. of course, you should make written demand for a very substantial refund from this attorney and a full accounting as to how any fee retained by him was in fact actually for work done in furtherance of the representation.
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