Chad E. Ahrens

Recently, my wife and I were sued and faced with the conundrum of either not defending ourselves and being steamrolled by the plaintiff or hiring a really good attorney to prevent that from happening.  We didn’t see this as much of a choice so we scrambled to find the best possible real estate attorn...ey.  We were referred to Chad Ahrens by a highly qualified and common friend, who happens to be a real estate attorney and a partner at Perkins Coie.  Since our friend practices law in another city, he promptly recommended Chad without hesitation – endorsing him as an attorney that he would hire to represent his interest if he ever had a need for a real estate attorney in Pierce County.     With such a credible recommendation it was a no brainer.  Chad Ahrens proved to be a brilliant attorney while representing our family in a HOA dispute.   We are glad we hired him because he and his team masterfully dismantled the plaintiff's argument and we were ultimately awarded a fully comprehensive victory.  I must point out that Chad was able to achieve such a comprehensive victory because he proceeded with integrity, has extensive expertise on the subject of real estate law and he is ridiculously smart.   Vindication was the ultimate goal, but I appreciate the experience of working with him.  He’s an outstanding communicator and always took an ethical approach.  In spite of the opposing party's motivations, he demonstrated an earnestness at finding and negotiating a resolution by agreement.   With this in mind, I recommend his work without reservation to anyone who requires strong representation in Pierce County.  He protected our family and we believe ourselves very fortunate to have been referred to Chad Ahrens.  I wholeheartedly endorse him because he has impeccable integrity and is a highly capable individual.  Should you or someone you know need a strong attorney, I highly recommend you hire Chad Ahrens to represent you.

We hired Chad for a property issue involving a neighbor that could potentially interfere with our ability to build on our own lot. I received multiple bills from Chad for a draft of a letter to the neighbor. I paid each bill immediately. No letter was ever drafted or sent. When I called, there was... always an excuse from Chad assistant(s) and I was repeatedly told the letter would go out the next day. Smith Aling moved their office, and that was another excuse for poor service and delays. After awhile, Chad refused to take my calls. He never responded to emails(about 50 of them). His staff continually put me off with excuses by phone and email, and eventually would not respond either. He drug his feet on this for over a year. We finally gave up and hired another attorney. When we went to pick up our file, it was completely empty. He charged us thousands of dollars for either no work done, or for some reason refused to give it to us. I suspect he never prepared or did very little. He appears very disorganized. We interviewed 3 attorneys to replace Chad. We had to start at ground zero, since Chad refused to give our file. All of them told us that Smith Alling has a lot of young, inexperienced attorneys, and they have heard complaints similar to ours. To make matters worse, Chad did enough meddling to alert the neighbor to a possible legal matter. The neighbor had already retained the best Land Use/Real Estate attorney in the region, and was prepared when we brought in our new attorney. At this point we cannot build our house as intended. Hiring Chad wasted a lot of our money, but most importantly, caused escalation of a small matter and has delayed my project for potentially years. We never understood why Chad did not have the professional courtesy to tell us why he neglected our case so badly. We would rather him admit he could not handle it or was to busy, such that we could have found appropriate counsel, rather than be strung out for so long. We trusted him to be our advocate. Hiring Chad was a disaster for us and actually caused us harm. We do not recommend this firm. Another complaint about the firm: they have errors in their accounting office. I actually used Chad for two separate issues, so they were assigned two account numbers. The billing statement reversed the charges on the two accounts. When I called to straighten it out, I was told "oh it doesn't matter to us, since you are paid up on both accounts." I had to argue that mattered to us, and wanted the bills to accurately reflect the work done for each issue. This is another example of the lack of attention to details by either Chad and/or the firm. By the way, Chad did to properly handle the other issue either. It is still a festering problem for which I will likely have to hire another attorney to get resolution.

Chad was very knowledgable, but very slow to respond. The case dragged on for about three years, and it was very difficult to get him to move forward with the case. He always had excuses, but he was just not very reliable. We ended up having to terminate him and take the matter to another attorne...y that came highly recommended.