Ryan Michael Schmalzle

I hired Ryan on as my attorney after the previous attorney I had racked up ridiculous amount of fees without having itemized invoices to provide for the work he had done. Long story short, Ryan did the same thing. When confronted with this, he failed or provide any documentation of an itemized invoic...e and had no explanation of what he was doing for “case prep” 3 hour increments, two hours, 4 hours and the list goes on. I called to question him about my bill and had concerns about what I was looking at and the time he spent speaking with me about billing concerns, WERE THEN ON MY NEXT INVOICE. I relayed to Ryan I did not wish to further my case any more with him, he continued working on the case and when it came time he calls my father to tell him he is 99% sure he can win this case and to continue keeping him on as counsel. Against my wishes he continues the case that I know longer was willing to further and on top of that goes behind my back and calls my father. Well, turns out he lost the case and managed to rack up another $12,000 on top of the $5,000 retainer we had previously been told it would cost. Now, I am sorry when your client is told that this won’t cost anymore than $5,000 how is it that you manage to rack up a bill of $17,000? All in all we ended up telling him we will only pay half of that bc he went against my wishes and betrayed attorney client Privilege by speaking to my dad and instead of just dropping the case as he was told he continued to further work on it, despite my wishes. We came to an agreement, so I thought bc he knew I had no interest in furthering that court case and we paid half of that. Which in all reality we were told we’d only be spending $5,000 in total. Which he managed to spend DOUBLE that and let me tell you, the opposing party’s lawyer did not manage to go above their $5,000 retainer when my lawyer managed to go up $20,000. He added an extra $3000-$4000 of working with a hired firm in Richmond bc he did not know how to handle the court of appeals court. Yet another thing I did not approve of nor did I know he was hiring another firm to do his work that he promised he was 99% sure he could win. I was already hesistsnt to take this on anyway and the fact that my lawyer who says he knows what he is doing is hiring another firm for the court of appeals bc he doesn’t know how to do x y and z, is very concerning. Now to add it all of this, I already had a distaste for what was going on that I was completely oblivious to all of the charges he was managing to rack up. At the end of it all we lost in the court of appeals after I was pursuaded AGAINST my own better judgment, AGAINST what I felt I did not want to do. Due to my lack of knowledge in the law and having good faith and trust that your attorney will lead you down a path that isn’t set up for failure, I ended paying about $13,000. And now after we came to an agreement that since he lead me down a misguided path that I was not willing to take the other $6,000 would be on him. He was unable to provide detailed analysis and documentation of all these random hours on top of hours of “prep and research.” With all of that and our agreement, I was just served in a civil lawsuit for “Warrant in debt, of $6,000.” Its amazing the audacity that humans have nowadays. I suggest you steer clear of this lawyer unless you want to be paying unreasonable ridiculous amounts of money then when faced to provide itemized detailed analysis of the work he was charging me for, come up empty handed. I am currently seeking counsel for a counter malpractice suit. Do your research before you hire this lawyer. Steer clear unless you want to be paying for work that was never done.