This former client, who I chose to fire and fully refund, has left the same review on every review site. Here is my response again:
I started this law firm in part so I wouldn't have to deal with abusive and disrespectful clients. Now that I have five employees, I want the same for them. I have no issues with firing a client who is treating my employees in an unacceptable manner.
This client ignored clear instructions from my associate attorney and then blamed the resulting delay completely on the attorney and our firm, in an unnecessarily disrespectful and inconsiderate manner. In his long, belligerent series of emails to my associate attorney, he lied about how he would lose "thousands of dollars" due to not being able to launch late this year, despite having already launched, despite having us file the application under a use-in-commerce basis, despite there being no legal benefit to waiting until registration to launch a product, and despite it being a legal impossibility to reach registration without launching, because the USPTO requires that an applicant's goods or services be on the market before an applicant to reach registration. This client was well aware of all of these things.
Regardless, I authorized a $300 refund to the client. The client continued to berate my employee--an attorney who has fifteen years of trademark law experience and who had given substantial free legal advice to this client on this trademark matter before the client paid anything--and the client set forth "expectations" about how my employee would interact with him in the future that essentially ensured that the client would continue to be disrespectful to my associate attorney over the course of the next several months.
I'm not going to sacrifice the mental health of my employees or myself for around $1000. I informed the client that we would no longer be able to work with him and I refunded the client in full, adding $874 to the existing refund, meaning a total refund of $1174, meaning we lost money on this transaction and my associate attorney's search report, legal opinion, and filing of the application were not compensated.
The client got significant legal work from an experienced attorney for free. We essentially rewarded him for his unacceptable behavior. But it's worth it to me because I want to operate a law firm where our lawyers and support staff know they're not obligated to continue to work with abusive clients.
