Description of service
When we purchased a small acreage in the country for our dream of getting away from it all, we didn't count on a neighbor with a backhoe showing up one morning and plowing across our fenceline. It turns out that he claimed that a strip of land we were using as a rightaway in order to get to the back of our property, which was bisected by a creek, was actually his private easement. Since this isn't what the seller of the land had represented to us, we contacted an attorney out of the yellow pages. We brought all our deeds and land contracts and surveys to his office, and after shuffling the papers around for forty-five minutes, he told us he could go to the courthouse and dig up the information, or we could do it ourselves. He then asked us for a check for 600.00, the minimum for his services. We told him not to let our bill get over that because we could do our own legwork, That evening he called our home and talked for nearly 2 hours. I thought he was just being nice, but then he sent us a bill for a balance of 200.00.
Review of Service
I really was not at all satisfied with this legal service, since we did all the real work at the courthouse ourselves, and ultimately just had to learn to get along with the neighbor and accept his claim because the old records backed up his story. I also didn't appreciate how the lawyer said he wouldn't let our bill get any higher, and then sent us a new bill for a phone conversation, which he never said in advance that he would charge for.
Tips
The lesson I learned from this is that a lawyer should be your last alternative, not something you should use for everyday conflicts. I learned you can do a lot of the work yourself, especially over the internet, and that would be my number one tip.
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