Hi guys,
I desperately need your advise!
I hired an attorney to prepare my EB1-OR petition at the begining of February, who claims to be the best immigration attorney in the South. The discussed legal fees were $3000-4000 (no more) for filing I140. No lawyer-client contract was signed. At the same first meeting I left all supporting documents useful for my case (more then 300 pages, almost everything possible). I paid $1000 advance fee.
My attorney had 1.5 month to prepare the first draft of the petition (I was out of the country). On my return, I immediately contacted him by E-mail about the status of my case and had no reply for several days. I finally received the answer: "working furiuously on your case". 3 days later I finally received the draft. 9.5 pages. 2.5 of them is my essay about the field of science,
that I was already billed for (approx. $200). 1 pages in the draft does not completely apply for my case (about teaching experience: my position is pure research), as well as criteria about judging work of others (I do not have anything strong). 2 criteria with strong provided documentations were completely missing. The rest of the draft was only usual centences, with big empty spaces supposed to be filled by me. The draft was taken from another petition and the attorney even did not bother himself to change "he" to "she", or "philosophy" to my field everywhere). There were actually nothing specific and useful for my case there. I fired him immediately because of his low-quality work. He pretended to return all my documents to me, but all my publications (~150 pages, grant contracts, CV of my referee) have never been returned.
Now i received the final bill. He estimated his work for 13 hours and charged me for $3100 without any explanation of the charges - simply "unbilled from April 4"!
My question is: what rights do I have? What should I do? I know about filing a complain with the bar, but is it sufficient? Should I do anything prior to the filing? Also, what should I do with his bill? Will not paying it be dangerous for my credit history?
Sorry for long posting. I appreciate any suggestions.
I desperately need your advise!
I hired an attorney to prepare my EB1-OR petition at the begining of February, who claims to be the best immigration attorney in the South. The discussed legal fees were $3000-4000 (no more) for filing I140. No lawyer-client contract was signed. At the same first meeting I left all supporting documents useful for my case (more then 300 pages, almost everything possible). I paid $1000 advance fee.
My attorney had 1.5 month to prepare the first draft of the petition (I was out of the country). On my return, I immediately contacted him by E-mail about the status of my case and had no reply for several days. I finally received the answer: "working furiuously on your case". 3 days later I finally received the draft. 9.5 pages. 2.5 of them is my essay about the field of science,
that I was already billed for (approx. $200). 1 pages in the draft does not completely apply for my case (about teaching experience: my position is pure research), as well as criteria about judging work of others (I do not have anything strong). 2 criteria with strong provided documentations were completely missing. The rest of the draft was only usual centences, with big empty spaces supposed to be filled by me. The draft was taken from another petition and the attorney even did not bother himself to change "he" to "she", or "philosophy" to my field everywhere). There were actually nothing specific and useful for my case there. I fired him immediately because of his low-quality work. He pretended to return all my documents to me, but all my publications (~150 pages, grant contracts, CV of my referee) have never been returned.
Now i received the final bill. He estimated his work for 13 hours and charged me for $3100 without any explanation of the charges - simply "unbilled from April 4"!
My question is: what rights do I have? What should I do? I know about filing a complain with the bar, but is it sufficient? Should I do anything prior to the filing? Also, what should I do with his bill? Will not paying it be dangerous for my credit history?
Sorry for long posting. I appreciate any suggestions.