Frieda Gordon billed me $700 for a telephone consultation which was at best unhelpful, and at worst, outright theft. Before the consultation, I had to sign a contract along with credit card approval documents stating that she would bill me for $350 for one hour of phone consultation and an additional $350 for one hour of "document preparation time". During the 47 minute phone consultation, which I recorded, she gave me only generic information regarding California probate law. When I questioned Ms. Gordon about the particulars of my case, she was obviously unprepared. On the recording, I can be heard asking her four separate times, "Did you read the documents?" When I mentioned the name of the primary actor, a person whose name appears 122 times in the documents, (I did a word count) she had to ask me who that person was. Looking back, I should have terminated her right then over the phone. I have listened to the recording multiple times and have become convinced that Frieda Gordon is truly the embodiment of all that can go wrong with a private practice attorney; she is corrupt and incompetent. Before I could send her a letter of termination, I received a new and unexpected contract from her in which she had raised her hourly billing rate to $400 per hour!
In my research, the lowest advertised fees I found for probate attorneys in California were $180 an hour. The fees charged by Cooper-Gordon are at the very top end of the scale. I recommend contacting one of the attorneys listed on Bill Handel's web site located here: http://www.handelonthelaw.com/home / The method of screening these attorneys is not described anywhere on Bill Handel's site, but every single attorney I contacted answered my questions intelligently via e-mail, free of charge.
Regarding Frieda Gordon's client-attorney contract; it is massive and curiously detailed.in it, she attempts to indemnify herself from every possible accusation a client could possibly make regarding "creative billing". After looking it over again, I couldn't help but wonder if it was a catalog of past client billing accusations against her. Truly an odd document, which in my opinion, falls suspiciously short of what a good faith client-attorney contract should be.
One last comment. Negative reviews about professionals such as this one are typically short lived on the net. This is because attorneys, doctors, accountants etc, who garner these type of reviews employ "reputation repair" services. As of this writing in I was able to find only one brief and poorly written positive review on Frieda Gordon, and not a single negative review, despite her being a practicing attorney for more than 25 years. So, you hereby have my permission to reprint this review anywhere it can serve the public good.
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