Wesley Mack Bryant

We hired Mr. Bryant in July for a breach of contract case against our contractor. His initial consultation was free and when we decided to hire him, we had to pay a non-refundable retainer fee of $1000. Because we had already compiled most of the paperwork and evidence needed in our case, Mr. Bryant ...said that it should be a “slam dunk case” and we probably wouldn’t go much over our retainer. He didn’t guarantee this, but said he felt this would be a fairly straightforward and easy case. While we did end up winning our case against our contractor (unfortunately not for the full amount we asked for), our day in court didn’t go as planned or as Mr. Bryant had discussed with us. First off, he had initially told us that he would have my wife testify first and with her, he would primarily focus on her disability and how that affected our case against our contractor. However, when the time came, he questioned me first and saved only a few small questions for my wife at the end, most of which had nothing to do with her disability. He had also told us that he was going to petition the court for a portion of our original contract amount based on the testimony of our contractor. He however never brought this up during our trial nor did he pursue that line of questioning with the defendant. This is particularly frustrating since we spent billable time talking to him about these matters prior to the trial and they were never brought up again in court. That was money wasted. 

 We were pleased (and a little surprised) when our trial only ended up lasting a little over an hour, especially since Mr. Bryant had cautioned us that it could last a few hours. While we had mixed feelings about how our case was handled in court, we felt somewhat reassured that we probably didn’t go much over our retainer given that our trial was much shorter than expected. Imagine our surprise when we later received our bill from Mr. Bryant and saw that we were billed for 3 hours for the court date! When I called him and asked him about this bill, he explained that this also included his commute and time spent preparing our witness prior to start of the trial. However, he was unable to account for the remainder of the 3 hours (our estimate was about 30-40 minutes unaccounted for). He made no effort to resolve or correct this issue when questioned about it. After we paid our final bill, we decided to terminate our contract with Mr. Bryant so that we would not end up with any more surprise bills from his office. 

 When we had our initial consultation, he told us there were less expensive attorneys out there but we hired him anyways, assured that we’d be getting the best service for our money. In the end, we do not feel that we received the best quality service at $300/hour.