We retained Jack Bernstein at Aird Berlis in regar...

We retained Jack Bernstein at Aird Berlis in regards to family shares held in Europe and the implementation for Canadian tax purposes.

On June 18 2018 he replied to my initial request by email. The wrong engagement file was attached however and I received two pages of legal advice "private and confidential" directed at a certain "person x" living in Europe. That did not boost my confidence but I went ahead anyways so it was noted by me to mister Bernstein and he send me the correct file. He stated 1400cad/h would be his rate and he'd be able to answer all my questions during a call.

Two weeks later, the call took place and lasted 20min(I know since I kept a recording for my reference). Most of my questions where answered. Then the invoice (s)? followed.

Invoice one was for the amount of 2816.63cad. There where no details on the invoice. This felt steep for a 20min call but I paid since I figured they added some extra's for setting up the call etc.

Much to my surprise a month later invoice two arrived. This was for the amount of 1470cad. Again it had no details on it so I emailed to inform what the invoice was for since no further advice was requested. Their answer was "legal research leading up to the call from one and a half month ago". Even though they did not inform me about this up front nor after I paid up to avoid trouble and asked to stop the engagement. No reply was given.

Another month later I received another invoice for the amount of +-500cad. This was it for me so I considered legal action and left an upset voice mail since they where not picking up the phone. They replied to me by email saying "you can discard the invoice, it was an accounting mistake". After this I explicitly asked them to deactivate my account and they finally did. I did not receive any further invoices.

One would assume that when someone charges 1400cad/h + extras they would have their stuff together. This did not seem to be the case to me and it felt like they where sending random invoices as long as we'd let them.

Another note; invoices without any details are against lawyer's ethics and a red flag. Unfortunately not illegal though.