John Walter Easterbrook

Jack Easterbrook and his team at Strategy Law have done a great job for us documenting complex loan transactions, including deals with unusual collateral; ESOP owned companies, as well as matters involving multiple related parties and guarantors. We count on them for high quality and timely legal work and they are able to handle it for us. Jack and his team make it a point to be extremely accessible to us which can make all of the difference in the world in successfully closing a banking transaction. We also appreciate that Jack and his team are there for us with thoughtful advice about issues that come up in the course of putting together and structuring loan proposals and various ways to interpret certain bank related legal documents.

Jack Easterbrook was the "primary attorney", representing me some years ago, as a small business owner, in a Commercial case (theft of customers by an ex-employee). Easterbrook billed me approximately $50,000+ in legal fees, though got my ex-employee to pay a settlement of $30,000. (Not worth my time and uncertainty of outcome. But, lesson learned). But then the ex-employee filed a claim, that the $30,000 was not justified..(even though Easterbrook had purportedly won it for me in the settlement). Easterbrook advised not to worry about including a settlement of it, as part of the original aforementioned herein case. But instead to defend against it subsequently (case #2). Then as case #2 proceeded, and remembering well the time and cost of case #1, said would cost less in legal fees for case #2, than paying back the $30,000. I said if it looked like it was going to approach $30,000 in legal fees for case #2, to stop and I'd pay the $30,000 to settle. However, over the course of several months, Easterbrook utilized what I'd call a slow/flood method (monthly "slow" billings of $1K - $2K, while suggesting close to closure...then intra-month with no warning, a "flood" billing of $30K+). This resulted in another approximately $50,000 in legal fees to Easterbrook, and still my having to pay back the $30,000 to the employee. Summary: The only winner here is Jack Easterbrook, double dipping for approximately $100,000 in legal fees. While Jack Easterbrook: 1) first took a case that he arguably should have known would cost more than could win. 2) not able to win a subsequent case, just to be able to keep for me, what he "won" in the first case. PS As it's been some years, Easterbrook may: a) feign not remembering my case, b) write some generic non-response, like this is so against his core values, that it couldn't have happened. c) Or, he'll combine a) & b), while having a paralegal post for him. Since he's unlikely to go on record, under his own. You know what that means.... he's hiding.