Antonio

Review of Rosemary Godwin - Criminal Def...

In my opinion WAY OVER PRICED. Don't be fooled by ...

In my opinion WAY OVER PRICED. Don't be fooled by the BIG NICE offices up on the 18th floor overlooking Raleigh. I was not impressed or satisfied with the service of Doug Kingsbery with Tharrington & Smith. I had a tax issue and spoke with him about my case. He spoke with a lot of confidence and stated he has years of experience and familiarity with these cases and the agents. Charged me 25k to retain (which I thought was extremely high) but felt I didn't have much of a choice.

Nothing really happen for about five months so I'm thinking things are being resolved. Then I get a call and informed I will need to turn myself in. Once I was released I feel the communication was bad and I was not well informed by my lawyer on what was going on. After several more months we met about the case which at the point he presented a plea offer of 4 felonies but suspended sentence. I thought the offer was terrible and stated I refuse to plea to felonies. I felt like the lawyer wanted me to take the plea and didn't want to fight the case or go to trial. He then mentioned if we move forward to trial it would be more money which he mentioned 75k which was OUTRAGEOUS to me. I left thinking 75k that I know I didn't have and stressed beyond my world. After I was able to think about it I came to the realize that the lawyer did not have my best interest at hand and was just about the MONEY.I terminated our agreement and hired another lawyer who was not cheap but alot more affordable...THE BEST THING I COULD HAVE DONE. My new lawyer was able to get a plea deal done of misdemeanor charges and avoid trial.

After making him aware that I no longer needed his services then the matter of a refund became the focus. He offer part of the fee back but not close to what I thought it should have been. Per the contact his charges were based on a $450 an hour rate (Which is HIGH) but then in my opinion his accounting of the time spent on the case was inflated. So I stated looking closer at the invoices for time spent on the case. This guy was charging 15 minutes of time for calling and leaving a voicemail (a minute of work) charged $112.50. Charged me the same thing for reading an email. Only problem was that was not in/part of our contract. Then it was the matter of two witness interviews for which he charged me the time rate plus travel gas. When I asked about a transcript for the interview he stated that he only had personal notes and refused to give them to me or my new lawyer. At that point I had to get the NC BAR involved. I filed a fee dispute which lead to mediation before we came to a settlement. Still wasn't what I thought it should have been for the service provided but I needed to get it settled to move forward. Don't make the same mistake I did when I saw another review on google about the high price they charge and just ignored it. In my opinion not worth the money.