Tinley Marie Rudd

Contacted this law office with a question through the means of a free consultation due to Judge recommendation to do a free consultation to answer a pending question on jurisdiction. Office was asked numerous times please let me know a fee associated with handling the case so that we could decide if ...we needed to retain said attorney. We never stated once we were retaining attorney and clearly informed office we would be in touch on our decision. Staff not us, repeatedly asked for additional information and called numerous times to engage in additional communication. After the court informed us the Judge researched the question herself, we informed this office we wouldn’t be retaining attorney as the court has stated it isn’t needed and they decided to charge us $600. Never informed us their hourly rate, never discussed fees, never informed us that by answering any additional questions via their emails or answering their calls they were planning to charge us as it was outside of the free consultation until we’d notified them we did not want to move forward with retaining them. They took advantage of us and we unfortunately trusted them. We paid the fee out of having a good heart ourselves but would not recommend this office due to the experience. As a business, it it your responsibility to inform your potential clientele your fees and your rate information or anything that involves money from the get go so that all parties are aware of what is expected from the beginning. If time was 30 mins for free consultation, at the time that was reached/maxed out, that should have been vocalized and communicated by the business so that the inquiring client was aware of any fees past the intended 30 min free consultation, prior to leading them on. This office from my experience has bad business practices and I can honestly say I do not trust them and feel they intentionally took advantage of our situation.