Neil Evan Schwartz's Reviews

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5.0 /5.0

151 Client Reviews

Showing 1 - 1 of 1 review | Debt & Lending Agreements

Posted by anonymous | November 05, 2014 | Debt & Lending Agreements

Don't go unless you are SURE this is what you want.

My husband and I went in looking for information, because we were still a little on the fence about bankruptcy, plus my husband is weary of attorneys here in Bakersfield, due to bad experiences. My first impression was, this guy is all business, which is a good thing, right? My husband started to exp...lain the situation at hand, as my husband was talking, he basically cut him off mid sentence and just wanted the facts... which is OK but made us feel immediately uncomfortable, almost like little kids. He told us he could do the bankruptcy but it wouldn't be cheap because the amount of money my husband makes. $2800, flat fee. He got pushy when my husband hesitated. We didn't want to give all the money at once so we decided to make a down payment of $1000. When we went back to his paralegal, she told us we had to pay an extra $400 for re-affirmation paperwork to give to the 2 auto loans we have. When my husband started to get irritated because we were told $2800, she said she would waive the fees..... THIS MEANS IF YOU DON'T SPEAK UP, YOU WILL BE PAYING FOR SOMETHING YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE TO. As we went along through the paperwork, she told us we had to spend everything in our savings and have basically NO money in the bank when it was time to file. When we hesitated, Schwartz would come in and try to re-assure us it was normal and OK. This happened about 3 times. Every time there was hesitation, she would e-mail him and he would pop in to basically steer us back to the bankruptcy solution. PUSHY. We ended up giving the $1000, to get us started, and we had 5 months to pay the rest. We didn't want file anything until July, for financial reasons and they said that would be fine. Less than a week later, our CPA told us it would be a better idea to just pay our debt ourselves and save the bankruptcy in case of job loss or something worse. When my husband contacted them to let them know he changed his mind, they wouldn't give us the $1000 back. They said that they charge $290 an hour and they had already worked on the file for about 3.5 hours. What a load of CRAP. We thought it was one flat fee? We hadn't even given them any information about our bills. Basically all the had was name, social and our car and mortgage information, which we were NOT going to let go. So, now we are out $1000 and my husbands faith in ANY attorney has been lost. My advice to anyone reading this, go elsewhere.

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Neil Schwartz

Replied last November 05, 2014

The person in question came to my office and had an extensive consultation with me. They then left to go to the bank, came back about an hour later and hired with my paralegal. As they were discussing the retainer with my paralegal new information kept coming up, at which time I had to come to the office and clarify it for the clients. We had put in quite a bit of work as detailed above in discussing their case directly with them. They were told to keep minimal amounts of money in the bank account so that they would not forfeit any money. Had they been honest and up front in the beginning any issues could and would have been avoided. To say that they were pushed into filing is completely untrue. We do not push people to file if there would be no benefit to them in doing so. If in fact it was a "flat fee" there would be no refund and in fact the complete balance would be owed at the time the contract was signed. The reviewer says that our office did not put in 3.5 hours to the case, but cites numerous times "at least 3 times" discussions with the attorney took place. In addition the entire bankruptcy was completed and available for printout minus minor updates should they have required proof of this.

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D. Max Gardner

Chapter 7 bankruptcy lawyer | Feb 09

Relationship: Fellow lawyer in community

"Solid, hard working lawyer."

Rabin Pournazarian

Bankruptcy and debt lawyer | Mar 23

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"I endorse this lawyer! Neil is a very competent attorney. He is also very nice."

Rahul Aggarwal

Unknown lawyer | Mar 13

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"An excellent lawyer who treats clients with patience, care, understanding, and utmost professionalism - an even better person and I wholeheartedly recommend for future services."