Complaint Review: Doan Law Group - Carlsbad California

I too had similar problems with Doan Law several years back while living in San Diego, CA. I made my initial appointment with the Carlsbad office, at the time I was newly divorced and afraid to ask the appropriate questions.  I was single with debt mounting and felt lost and confused.  I met with a gentleman who was not an attorney.  I will say that it was one of the strangest meetings I have ever had.  He basically told me that he was very busy and was going to multi-task during our appointment, then proceeded to answer emails and phone calls with me sitting there dumbfounded.  I felt so embarassed and uncomfortable, he barely listened to me - and seemed to have other important things to do.  It was so insulting and unprofessional but at the time I just kind of put up with it feeling embarassed over my situation and almost grateful that someone would help.  In hindsight now, I would never allow this kind of treatment.  He told me that my next step would be to pay the retainer, from there a letter would be drafted for me to send out to my creditors.  I found this odd because wouldn't the firm send this out? I mean this is what I am paying a retainer for right, to retain their services?  But again, I didn't ask.  They run my credit report, have someone from the office call me and give me a poorly formatted mail merge letter addressed to each of my creditors which I had to obtain postage for (preferably certified mail) and send out.

 I was confused but at the same time relieved because I thought this was the start to having some breathing room and starting over.  Because I could not afford the money up-front, I paid in monthy payments.  It was a little over $300 a month I believe with the final total being $2000.00, at that time I would finally be able to proceed with my bankruptcy.  About 4-5 months in (drawing from a foggy memory) I lost my job, I was beside myself.  Here I was trying to work my way to get the relief and now I was out of an income. Unemployment was barely enough for me to cover the bills let alone a $300+ payment for my bankruptcy.  I called the Doan office and asked if I could either put my bankruptcy on hold or just stop it all together and be refunded the money that I had already put in.  Since the only thing done was to draft half-hazard letters that I myself sent out.  I thought that when I was back on my feet I could then re-initiate a bankruptcy, but for that point in time I really just n needed the extra money to pay bills or just to put it on hold.  I was told by the office person that "we're a law office, we don't do refunds"  very rudely and she actually snickered at me.  Then she proceeded to tell me that if I wanted to put it on hold there was an additonal fee of $100 for every month my case was on hold.  I was speechless, I wish I had demanded to talk to someone else but I was so scared and embarassed I just let it go.  Fast forward to years later and creditors still haunt me, I get by day by day but now I actually have had a child in the meantime an another on the way. 

I yearn to start over and be clean, but have to hide from my old debts.  I feel guilty for bringing this past into my present with my husband and children, our hopes of owning a home are greatly jeopordized by my past.  I feel like something wrong happened there, really wrong - it just seems like I was taken advantage of and I really can't shake my thoughts about it.  In the end many of my financial problems were from poor decisions on my part in my youth but I sought to right them with help from Doan.  What this experience did was really damage me from trusting anyone who works under the guise of helping people.  Where I go from here I'm not sure.  But I saw so many other people who had went through the same thing like me and wanted to say that I can relate.  I hope that I can fix things and provide a better future for my kids, and that may take finding a true, honest lawyer which the term seems a little like an oxymoron. Good luck to anyone else out there going through this.  God bless all the other struggling hard working people out there.

Hi,

Im the owner of the firm, Michael Doan.  What is yiour name?  I cleaned house a few years back and eliminated attorneys and others that did not meet the firm's expectations.  I have since personally conducted all new client interviews for the past 2 years and would like to fix your situation.  Please contact me at your earliest convenience.  I apologize for what you went thru and hope to make things right.  You can email me at [email protected].

Thanks