Kyle J. Martelon

Kyle J. Martelon was described to me as "a bulldog" attorney by one of his group's associates, which can be a very good thing with difficult cases. I am a physician and would have been able to afford and pay his retainer fee of 7500 and consultation of 375. I politely communicated with him that (per...haps mistakenly) I thought he had quoted me 6800 as a retainer, that I wanted to make sure that I would be getting some progress without "blowing through" the $7500 retainer and that I would prefer not having a junior associate due to previous poor experiences. He immediately, very abruptly and bluntly decided "we were not a good fit" without any attempt to discuss things or work with me. Indeed, we were not a good fit bc in my profession compassion and empathy is key to providing excellent care and service, but for Kyle J. Martelon there seems to be little to no humanity in his way of practicing his profession.

I would strongly suggest that you look elsewhere if you'd prefer not to be ripped off. I'm surprised at their high ratings; it gives me the feeling that I'm not their typical target customer. I had Kyle at Ciancio Ciancio Brown draft a partition contract after I was referred by another attorney at... the same firm who had no bandwidth to take on my engagement. Kyle quoted me a much higher price compared to what the other attorney had originally quoted. Kyle told me that they built in some extra as they expected some negotiation to take place; however, there was general agreement between both parties on the specifics of the contract prior to the engagement. Additionally, we were in a state of crisis at the time that Ciancio Ciancio Brown services were retained and I feel like they took advantage of both my panic and my confusion about the options and possibilities for the contract. We reached a point where I requested no further action and so we closed out the engagement. The final price was absolute highway robbery. They took a large retainer fee at the inception of the engagement and it's clear that they intended to fully use that up as my engagement cost only very slightly more than the retainer fee. The contract itself is clearly mostly canned with a few items filled in based on information that I provided. When questioned about the price, I was told that it was partially my fault because I insisted on communicating by email rather than by phone. I do prefer email contact, but I do not recall a discussion that email contact would basically be over-billed and that phone contact would be far cheaper. I also don't buy Kyle's comments that this contract was complex because again, both parties were in agreement of the terms. As a final note, the whole process felt very casual and unprofessional compared to engagements I have in process with other attorneys.