Andrew J. McKeown

Andrew McKeown

This former client was offered the same exceptional contract and service that all of our clients are offered. No upfront money and no out of pocket cost ever, no exceptions. We only earn a fee if we are successful in increasing our clients’ monthly payments. Our contract also specifies that if a client’s back pay does not cover our fee, we will reduce our fee dollar for dollar against the back pay. This is to assure no out of pocket expense is ever incurred for using our services. In most cases our clients receive substantially more back pay than our fee. There are rare cases where the back pay does not meet or exceed our fee. In those cases we always reduce the fee down to the amount of back pay, in accordance with the contract. Such was the case here. The case was a partial victory for which this former client has received substantially more compensation than what they were previously receiving. Again, this was achieved without a penny out of pocket and absolutely no risk to this individual. We did believe that we could keep fighting this case in pursuit of more compensation, again without a single penny out of pocket and absolutely no risk to the client. We invoiced the client for the amount due for our prior work and offered to continue pursuing their case, as described above. Inexplicably, this former client responded with very aggressive and abusive emails. We understand these are tough times for folks with COVID and everything else going on in the country. With that in mind we understand folks sometimes tend to vent their frustrations at the wrong target. Considering these tough times, we decided to look past this former client’s unreasonable behavior and decided to waive the entire fee due. We notified the former client that we decided to withdraw from pursuing their case any further and cancelled the entire fee due. It was at that point the former client became verbally aggressive again and threatened to leave negative reviews everywhere they could find a place to do so unless we continued to pursue the case. Bottom line, we won’t be bullied into representing anyone, even if we lose money or receive a negative review. So ultimately this former client walked away in a much better financial position and never had to pay a single penny and felt justified in leaving negative reviews. This former client reminded me of an expression I heard a long time ago when I was assigned to my infantry unit in the Marine Corps. I recall my Staff NCO warning a group of us “90% of you will do the right thing 100% of the time. 10% of you won’t do the right thing EVER. Your job is stay away from that 10%.” I was always one of the 90% Marines and will always run our law firm in that same light. This former client is simply part of that 10%. Lesson learned for us.