Sheela M. Papol

We hired Sheela as a real estate attorney. She quoted us a flat fee, but we found out the hard way that it is actually an hourly rate. We were on the brink of closing on a house after we had pulled out and the sellers came back giving us terms that we were satisfied with. At this point, Sheela cl...aimed it was now a NEW deal, and that she’d have to put in a lot more work- she said that because she had worked more than the estimated 5 hours of her flat fee rate, moving forward we would have to pay an additional $250 hourly rate. That’s not a FLAT FEE then. I reviewed the contract line by line, comparing it to the last version that had been negotiated, and confirmed that it was definitely not a new contract. It reflected everything agreed upon and literally only had three TYPOS that needed to be changed. Otherwise we were ready to sign. Unbelievable. She also kept our contract hostage for a week while she was on vacation, and when she got back to work, she didn’t even call or email us about the revised contract. I had to call her. She won’t respond to emails and prefers phone calls. She strictly does not work on weekends or vacations, so if you’re trying to turn around a contract quickly, you’re going to be frustrated. She often asks to call her back “in 5 minutes”, but this is often difficult when you’re working and on a different coast . She does not know how to edit pdfs so she prints contract drafts, handwrites her commentary, scans them, and emails them every time. If this is how she counts her hourly rate, then you are paying for inefficiency too.