Melody Brooks Royall

Dead simple TX to CA adoption. Extremely cooperative birth parents. Melody waited until she had us over a barrel & then claimed "unexpected requirements of the law" to charge us 75-100% more than she had "expertly" estimated at the start. Prior to hiring The Royalls I specifically asked if the...y were experts in adoption law & that I expected stellar representation & full value for $350/hr. The Royalls assured us of their expertise & confidently told us what they could do. They asked us to trust them & do business with them. Though never impressed with The Royalls, we thought things were proceeding normally. After returning to CA with our newborn we received The Royalls' bill & were stunned by the cost over-run. We were given an expert's estimate of $2,500-3,500 & then were charged $5,674. An expert wouldn't make this kind of mistake. $2,500 is a lot of money to us. Not mentioning the additional cost until after the "services were rendered" made the extra fees seem very underhanded. A professional would have kept us informed & helped us limit the financial damage. The Royalls are VERY careful about getting money up front but do not show the same care or motivation when delivering the promised services. When we tried to discuss the 60-125% higher fee we were simply told that unexpected work was required. As self proclaimed experts in TX to CA adoption, The Royalls should not charge me when their expertise fails. When we explained our displeasure at being misled & overcharged, Melody proceeded to blackmail us by holding on to all our papers until we paid the questionable bill in full. Additionally: 1. Melody had no idea how to get fingerprinted in CA in a way that would stand up legally in TX. Since returning from TX we have been informed that the method she advised us to take broke CA law in a couple of ways. Nothing like a lawyer expertly advising you to break the law???? This whole process was a nightmare that took us 3 evenings to get done because Melody didn't know what she was doing. Chalk up 4 hours of our time that she wasted due to incompetence. 2. We had to spend an entire afternoon traveling to Melody's office to sign papers that her representative failed to have us sign the day before when we were present. This was a day we had planned to spend visiting a family friend that lived a couple hours from Houston. So Melody's mistake robbed us of 20 hours that she would have valued at $7,000, but she offered no apology, no refund & took no blame. 3. When our child was born in the early afternoon, I called her office only to be told that she was unavailable. A lawyer I had paid full retainer for this exact occasion, who knew the birth was immenent, was "unavailable". She didn't bother to return my call until late in the evening. 4. When we disputed the over-charges she claimed that this was a first & then stonewalled us. She had our lawyer here in CA tell us that we weren't getting the papers until we paid the bill. Trusting The Royalls left us feeling that lawyers' poor reputation is justly earned and that The Royalls care only for their income.