Vivian Leigh White

When I first met with Vivian she was very attentive and willing and wanting to work for me on a positive outcome on my case. I paid her the $500 retainer that she required to work on my case. During my divorce proceedings she was very hard to contact, sometimes it would be days before she responded t...o me. I later found out that my spouses attorney had many times tried to contact her, with the same results, days before a response. After 3 months of proceedings, my spouse and I had decided to reconcile and I asked her to draft up a motion to vacate, which she gladly did. At the same time, she asked me to pay the balance for her work that she had done, which I did. I paid the balance in her office at the same time I was signing the motion to vacate so I really didn't have time to review the bill thoroughly. After I got home I sat down and reviewed the bill and to my surprise, the bill was grossly inflated with charges and activities that she never did. Hours that were billed for phone calls such as a phone call that was only 5 min, I was charged an hour, my only declaration I filed while she was my attorney, she charged me for reviewing it for 2 hours and claims on the bill, included 5 pictures along with the declaration. The pictures weren't even emailed to her until a week and a half later, after she claims on the bill that she had reviewed them. She also charged me for and claimed she had drafted up an order after my court hearing when in actuality my spouses attorney had drafted up the order. These are just some examples of the false charges. After finding these false charges I circled all charges that weren't correct and wrote her a formal letter concerning the matter and sent it Certified Return mail. The letter was returned to me 15 days later unopened. No one had claimed it. I then tried to contact her via phone leaving several messages and was unsuccessful so I resorted to going to her office personally. It was then, at her office that I confronted her about the matter and had her read the letter and billing documentation that I had sent her Certified. She told me after reading the letter and reviewing the billing documentation that she would get back to me within the week. That never happened. I again tried several times after that week to get a hold of her........again with no response. Two weeks later after again calling with no response, I finally sent her a text demanding she respond to me, I told her she was being totally unprofessional and unethical....and wow! I got a response, to which she replied with defensive statements, how she helped me win battles in court, she put off other clients to work on my case and she was worth the amount she had billed me, there was nothing to the FACT that she had Falsely charged me for services that were never performed by her. To date I still have not received a refund and cannot submit a complaint to the Washington State Bar Association because they don't resolve or discipline attorneys for billing discrepancies. I am putting this out there to make sure other people looking for fair, ethical, responsible attorneys, don't make the same mistake I did.