William Michael Holm

I engaged Mr. Holm to “evaluate potential claims that may be made relating to the management of the Partnership” for a “flat fee of $7,500.00” . Holm never fulfilled his part of this contract because he never gave me an opinion about my legal options. He called and suggested I bring a derivative ...action lawsuit for which I needed to deposit $50,000 more into the escrow account. At no time did Holm analyze a course of action, he did not inform me of expected costs, he did not give me an estimate of time involved for the case to get to court and he basically left me completely uninformed about what to expect. I informed him I was giving him everything I had to spare for a lawsuit. His work was sloppy, incomplete, inaccurate and given his desire to change direction, not even the proper course of action. As he made so many mistakes, it was obvious he never completely read or understood the documents he was paid to read and study to make his original report ( that I never receive)d, and this affected his ability to represent me. In the draft of his complaint he did not even have the correct name of the partnership. He made blunders of speech that supported the opposing party's position. In other matters, more than once he misunderstood and responded inappropriately. At the end of our relationship he decided my best course of action was to drop the lawsuit he had prepared to draft a new derivative action against another party. For this he demanded I deposit $75,000 more into the escrow account in which I had only $16,000 remaining. Holm had spent $42,000 in a little over a month and accomplished nothing. He left me facing the threat of a lawsuit with no attorney. Had I not been able to retrieve assets from a frozen account on my own, I dread to think where I would be right now. Rather than protecting me or helping me, I would say his actions accomplished exactly what I told him the opposing side was trying to do. It was even in a deposition that the adversarial person's intention was to financially stress the other partners until they could no longer defend themselves. The purpose was to force the partnership into a sale so the assets could be bought cheaply. In one email I asked him point blank if he was too expensive for me to let me know so I could look for a cheaper attorney while I still had money left to retain one. He never billed me and I still have not received a bill. I waited two weeks before he told me in an email how much money I had left. I am completely devastated.