David Julian Smith

When filling out the forms for my bankruptcy and submitting them to the trustee, his computed amount for my payment was underestimated. So, instead of $800 a month, my payment ended up being $930 a month. My initial filing and subsequent amendments were always filed at the very last minute. Cons...equently, I ended up with a few late payments on my credit report that I struggled to get removed. He offered to go after pay I lost when it was kept by the bank to satisfy an overdraft. I waited exactly a year before he took any action over something that he offered to pursue, and I got none of it back. Submitted information to have the bankruptcy admended to include an additional year of taxes. Also, told him I was taking a job with a lower salary and needed to have my monthly payment adjusted. Took him exactly one and a half years to send in the petition. He also kept making mistakes on the computation of the adjusted payment amount and had to redo the paperwork numerous times. In the meantime, emails following up for status were generally not answered. So much time had gone by that I ended up getting too far into my payment plan for the additional taxes and lower payment to be absorbed leaving me to have to figure out how to pay the extra taxes and higher payment amount on my own. Then, he asked for the tax return for another year that was already included in the bankruptcy to forward to the IRS, saying the IRS didn't have it. I told him he already had that information. He said he didn't and that I had only sent him a preliminary tax return. I found the email I sent him three years earlier that had the official tax return and forwarded it to him. He said he'd also work with the IRS to come up with an arrangement to pay the additional year of taxes. He never did. I had one of my creditors contact me directly to obtain documentation that he was supposed to forward. Because bankruptcies are a fixed fee, he ignores subsequent emails regarding any developments once the bankruptcy is accepted by the trustee. This resulted in me having to go directly to the trustee to get matters resolved. They in turn forwarded the emails to this attorney, and he would direct me not to contact the trustee but to contact him. Included in these emails forwarded by the trustee were mentions of his incompetence, which ultimately caused trouble between me and the attorney. In fact, because of my experience with this attorney I considered on a couple of occasions filing complaints with LegalShield and the bar association. As a person that grew up not far from this area, I will say that this level of customer service is typical. I regret moving back to the area and I’m glad I subsequently left again.

We were referred to Mr. Smith to create wills for us. We were a little surprised when we got to the office and his representation as a bankruptcy lawyer was so prominently displayed. We proceeded, and were largely happy with the draft he produced. However, we do have a particular circumstance to con...sider and he never directly responded to questions about whether he had researched this issue and what he found (via his paralegal), and stopped returning our calls. I suspect he did not research the issue in question. We found another lawyer who has addressed the situation we face, and indicated that the way the wills were drafted would not have afforded us sufficient protection.