My business relationship with Mr. Saris started in July 2009 and included a new client fee of $750 which I paid in August 2009 plus $200 per month paid from August 2009 through April 2010. The recurring fee covered the cost of a one hour meeting each month and entitled me to a discount on the cost of any litigation.

We met five times in the first seven months on 7/24/09, 8/6/09, 8/20/09, 11/3/09 and 1/29/09. At these meetings we discussed various legal questions faced by my businesses. I was generally satisfied with the outcome of these meetings; however, he was very poor and responding to email inquiries. I often had to ask the same question in two meetings before it was addressed.

During our meeting on 2/15/10 we talked about estate planning. In advance of the meeting I completed his estate planning questionnaire. We talked for about 2 hours. At the time I paid a fee of $2,750 for estate planning services. I expected that Mr. Saris would prepare an estate plan based on the information he gathered through the questionnaire and interview.

We did not meet at all in March or April. Regardless, I paid the $200 monthly fee these months. I thought Mr. Saris was busy creating a complex estate plan.

We met again on 5/28/10 to review the estate plan. We talked for about an hour but mostly we covered the same subjects as the first meeting. Mr. Saris had not prepared any documents nor made any plans based on the results of our first meeting. He came to the meeting with a blank piece of paper. Two and a half months after I paid for estate planning services nothing had been accomplished.

When I looked back over these events I felt that I did not get any extra service for the $2,750 fee. We had only 7 meetings during the 11 months we were working together. No documents were drawn up for the estate plan. Even though we spent some time talking about estate plans we did not utilize any more of your time than the regular maintenance fee would allow.

On 6/16/10 I asked Mr. Saris to refund the $2,750 estate planning fee. On 7/4/10 I asked about the status of the refund request and Mr. Saris said he would work on evaluating the situation ‘this week’. On 8/5/10 I asked again about the status of my refund request. This time, Mr. Saris indicated that he needed to take the issue up at a partner meeting which will be held ‘next week’. On 9/17/10 Mr. Saris offered a 50% refund of the estate planning fee. I accepted his offer but it took several more emails and four more weeks for me to receive a $1,300 check.

In summary, I paid $2,750 in February for ‘estate planning services’. After 4 months Mr. Saris had delivered no documents of any kind. I asked for a refund. It took 4 more months to get less than half of my money back. I think that Mr. Saris should have quickly refunded the entire estate planning fee even though it was called a ‘non-refundable fee’.