David B. Porter

We do not recommend Dave Porter as we feel there was insufficient transparency between his fee and hours worked and most of all we left the engagement with little valuable legal advice. We engaged Dave Porter for advice about Proposition 19 property tax issues. Though his website lists him primarily ...as a tax attorney focused on litigation, he assured me that he could advise on Prop 19's impact to our estate taxes. We submitted a retainer, a copy of our trust and scheduled a call. He was courteous but tended to wander, and at $500 an hour, this is an issue. We ended the 50 minute call with a recommendation by him. We researched alternative legal sources and found the recommendation was debatable so we opted not to proceed. We were ultimately billed for $1000 for our 50 minute call and the hour it took him to read our trust (which is boiler plate). However, after billing an hour to read the trust he could not answer a basic question about its portability, and for that he charged us $500. We asked him to reconsider his 2 hour fee as it seemed excessive relative to the advice delivered. He declined and discontinued communications. It is unprofessional to not respond or to discuss disagreement on quality of service provided. It is unfortunate that Dave chose this short sighted approach to doing business as he has eliminated any future opportunities and referrals from us.