Barry Richard Cohen

I had an extremely negative experience with attorney Barry Richard Cohen. I hired him in June, '19 for 3 legal matters: 1. Appeal property tax on a bldg 2. Submit a request to Miami-Dade County to correct the owner of record on file for the aforementioned bldg 3. File a foreclosure lawsuit Cohen coll...ected a $12k retainer ($3.5k, $3.5k & $5k) & assured me I would receive a detailed billing each month. Each matter proceeded as follows: 1. Appeal property tax: After agreeing to file the appeal & spending time on it, Cohen referred me to another firm. I asked him to refund the $3.5k retainer. Instead he applied the retainer to the other 2 matters. As I trusted him at the time I didn’t object. 2. Submit request to M-D County to fix ownership info: The bldg had changed owners in ‘14, a circumstance with which Cohen ought to have been familiar, as my family had hired him to perform title work on the bldg at the time of the sale. As of June '19, the County's records still reflected the previous owners. I hired Cohen to submit the docs necessary to correct the ownership data. Because he had already performed work related to the change in ownership (in '14), he would presumably have needed min. time to re-acquaint himself with the matter; moreover, I gave him the docs he told me he would need to request the change, so he should not have needed to spend any time retrieving those docs from his own files. Cohen informed me when the work had been completed & said he spent very little time on it. He said the work involved drafting & sending an e-mail to the County accompanied by the docs I had provided. 3. Foreclosure lawsuit: A few weeks after Cohen initiated the lawsuit, I discovered that the lawsuit wasn’t necessary. He told he had performed ~ $8k worth of work. I asked him if, as a courtesy, he would reduce his fee to $5k. He agreed. As this was negotiated over the phone, I followed up with an e-mail confirming the $5k fee. Cohen acknowledged his acceptance via e-mail reply. On 8/15, I asked Cohen for an accounting of his fees for all 3 matters, as he had not responded to previous requests from me for same. He told me I would receive the accounting 8/19. I didn’t hear from him 8/19, phoned him 8/20 & requested a refund, as follows: #1 File Tax Appeal: No charge. #2 Submit Request to Fix Ownership Data $300 max (allowing for 1 hour of his time @ $300 / hour; he had stated earlier that this work required very little of his time, consisting of drafting & sending an e-mail.) #3 Foreclosure Lawsuit $5k Total Fees: $5,300 Refund Due: $6,700 Cohen was very unpleasant on the call; most disturbingly he denied agreeing to accept $5k on the foreclosure lawsuit even though he had acknowledged in writing that he would. He again failed to provide me with the accounting that I had requested multiple times. I then hired an attorney to deal with Cohen. Finally on 10/7 Cohen provided the accounting I had requested almost 2 months before. He refused my request for a refund. Cohen billed 5.9 hours for matter #2. IMO, he grossly overcharged, based on (1) his earlier statement that he had spent very little time & (2): More than 3 months after Cohen said he filed the request to the County, the data had still not been fixed. I hired another attorney to submit a new request. That attorney charged me for 1 hour even though, unlike Cohen, he had no prior familiarity with the matter. If the new attorney spent 1 hour, it’s inconceivable that Cohen could have spent nearly 6 times that. I then requested fee arbitration through the Fla Bar. This is a voluntary process for resolving client / attorney disputes. Cohen refused to participate. After refusing mediation, Cohen contacted me twice to dissuade me from complaining against him to the Fla Bar. During both calls I asked why he had refused mediation. He said that he was concerned that mediation might result in him having to refund some of his fees. That explanation speaks for itself.