Michael John Kretzmer

I hired this attorney 2 months ago at the recommendation of my family law attorney as he claimed Kretzmer had dependency court experience. This attorney took $10,000 from me and did next to nothing for me. I had to fire him within days of my trial because he had not even subpoenaed any of my witness...es for the trial and simply asked me to call them and ask if they would come. This attorney also told me I had to figure out all of my exhibits by myself, which I did, and felt like I was in the dark the whole time with my questions on how to figure out what the exhibits should be since he never responded to any of my texts asking for his advice on what to use as my exhibits. During the time he was in dependency court for me (twice) he steadily charged me while working on other cases the entire 8-9 hours we were there at $500/hour. I've been trying to get a response from him for 3 weeks in a row regarding the refund of what's left of my $10,000 retainer. I received one reply immediately after I fired him where he states he'll get me an invoice and that I probably owe him more money. my experience with this attorney is that he simply doesn't care about you or your case and will expect you to do most of the legwork on your own. I'm grateful the judge allowed for a continuance of my case so that my new attorney can pick up the pieces I was able to fragment together and lead me in the right direction now.

The one star I gave is far too generous for this man. He belittled his 12 years old client, did not refund the retainer he did not use until I had to report him to the State Bar, and even at that - he only refunded 1/2 the amount owed, and that took nearly 2 years. I had numerous meetings with both... Mr. Kretzmer and another attorney - and I timed the meetings as to not go far over my budget since their rates are extremely high. EVERY meeting that the 3 of us had, the other attorney billed me within 5 minutes of the time I had noted. Mr. Kretzmer billed me for as much as 40 minutes more than either the other attorney had billed or I had notated - FOR THE SAME MEETING. I can only presume that there is a high possibility that Mr. Kretzmer padded all of his billed times. Unfortunately, except for the times where there were 3 of us in the meeting, it became his word against mine - and since he already was holding my retainer, apparently Mr. Kretzmer works on the theory of possession of my money is 9/10ths of the law. There are so many better choices than him when hiring an attorney. DO not go to this man unless you do not care if you are over billed, treated poorly, and do not care if you do not get your unused retainer fees back.

If it was possible to have zero stars, that is more accurate. Mr. Kretzmer was lazy and did not represent my needs, only what was in his best interest. He did not even take care of the basics such as transferring my case file to my new counsel. In reviewing his work (or lack thereof) every subsequ...ent attorney who saw it was appalled.