Susan Lee Ford

Susan used her many years practicing law as her reason for charging considerably more for her services. She filed my trademark and a straight forward estimated to take 9 months to 1 year process took nearly 2 years. The delays resulted from: her poor organization, changing law firms, and mistakes on ...my application just to name a few. During my phone consult she assured me hiring a seasoned lawyer (her) would insure my paperwork would be filed correctly and that I'd avoid common mistakes other less seasoned lawyer would make. What ended up happening was a series of problems which she kept referring to as unfortunate. She lied to me, she had a paralegal, she WAS NOT doing the work like she had told me during our consultation. So when the first round of mistakes popped up she blamed it the person she had do all the work and then turned around and demanded I must pay her $350 per hour to fix the issue. Since I'd already paid her over a thousand dollars not including the application fee's I was stuck. When I hired Susan she had her own law firm. But then 9 months after filing my application (surprise) more problems popped up and she demanded I must repay the initial retainer amount ALL OVER AGAIN since she is NOW with a new law firm. She had merged law firms and not informed me. I kept pleading with her that I had hired her and not this new law firm but she kept insisting I must re-pay her all over again if she is to continue to work with me. After lots of going back and forth and lack of funds I had to contact USTPO myself to fix her errors. Susan caused me so much stress and sleepless nights I wish I would have asked others who'd worked with her about their experience in working with her. I would have researched her a bit and inquired why her law firm has bounced around so much in 10 years. Long story short, Susan seems like a competent lawyer on the surface. But she is not organize, not truthful and once you are her client you have to pay for her mistakes or start over with a new lawyer. In summary, I feel she is unethical, incompetent and pretends to care about women and small businesses but in fact she only cares about herself and how much money she can squeeze out of a client.