Ms Houseman met with me at a coffee shop and requested full payment of a retainer in the amount of $3500 to represent me in a TRO brought by a contentious neighbor.
At that point, I had not received a complete copy of the complaint so I did not know what the other party was alleging. When I met with her I gave her many documents to help her prepare for the case. Ms. Houseman told me the retainer would cover all costs: obtaining the complete TRO complaint, appearing in court to request a continuance, appearing in court at the hearing, writing a synopsis of my narrative from the documents I had given her, all calls needed to defend the case and possibly filing a TRO against the complainant. She advised me she needed to request the continuance because she needed time to prepare. She promised to work on a narrative over the weekend from the documents and narrative I provided and send it to me for my approval by Monday. I never received anything from her and she was difficult to reach despite leaving messages with her “assistant” who claimed he never heard the messages I left on the answering machine.
Court date was initially set for April 27, 2017 and although Ms. Houseman said she would appear in court to get the Continuance. Since she had been reluctant to get the complete complaint (I was only served with 6 pages that did not include the allegations) I went to Court myself and was told it was too late in the day to get the copy and I would have to come back the next day. As I work as a school nurse I was not able to take time off to get the order. Ms Houseman told me, in a text, I had no choice but to do so even though I had explained that I was unable to do so and thought she was going to get it for me. I later found out from the attorney I hired to replace her, that there was a service that she could have used to obtain the complete complaint. I had lost all confidence in her promise to appear on the Court date to request the continuance. Therefore, I went the day before the hearing to request the Continuance; which I was able to obtain along with the complete complaint.
As a courtesy, I called Ms. Houseman to advise her that I had obtained the Continuance. She expressed surprise that I was able to do so and then tried to intimidate me by telling me that if she didn’t appear the next day the opposing party would be awarded the Restraining order. At that point, it became obvious that Ms. Houseman either lacked the knowledge about the procedures or she was feigning ignorance for the purpose of intimidating me into allowing her to make an unnecessary court appearance to justify her fee. That evening, I sent her an email advising her I was seeking other counsel due to her lack of service. I requested that she return the unused amount of my retainer. I assumed that she would return most of the retainer because she had not provided any of the promised services and had only been my attorney for 6 days.,. By that time I had read several Yelp reviews that indicated similar experiences with Ms. Houseman.
I gave her a deadline to return my money along with an accounting of time spent. Her accounting did not match with my documented phone records, emails and texts. She sent me a check for $885.44 along with a bill from FedEx Office for $50.47, which she claimed was the cost to copy my documents. I had told her to mail back my original copies although she could keep the emails. When I got the box of documents I realized that she had returned my original documents, not copies she had made, by USPS not FedEx. There was no need for her to copy the documents I had provided as she was no longer my attorney. If she chose to copy and keep those documents she was not entitled to charge me for the copies. I then sent her a certified letter, on June 1, 2017, advising her that I did not agree with her accounting, detailing the time I figured she might have spent on my case and demanding that she return an additional $1477.06 by June 7, 2017. She ignored this demand. I have not cashed her check and I advised her of that fact explaining that if I do cash the check it is not to be considered an acceptance of that check as final payment for what she owes me.
I was not her first victim. Additonally, she has a very splashy website that states she has 4 offices and has expertise in every type of law. She does not have an office she meets people in coffee shops. He "assistant" Greg is actually her househusband and the 818 phone number is actually his cell phone not an office phone. He sometimes has been known to disguise his voice as a woman to avoid speaking to people. Rebecca is hard to reach once she has your money. She also likes to brag about working as a prosecutor for the DA's office. However, she wasn't there long.