If you listen to Padres games, or watch them on television, you're very familiar with the commercials of the Pacific Law Center. Heck, if you live in San Diego and have eyes or ears you know of this law firm, whose ads can be found all over San Diego County in phone books, newspapers, the radio, and television. Allegations are now surfacing that the law firm was not keeping the promises it makes in its ads.
The San Diego Union Tribune is reporting complaints by lawyers who worked at the Pacific Law Center as well as complaints by former clients of the firm.
Lawyers formerly employed by the firm have alleged in lawsuits and in sworn statements that Pacific Law Center uses unethical practices, such as allowing unlicensed clerks to sign up clients and give out legal advice. Two attorneys sued, claiming that they were fired after objecting to that. Lawsuits filed by former Pacific Law Center attorneys depict a business where lawyers have caseloads so large that it is difficult for them to provide the kind of representation the firm advertises. Instead, they say, the emphasis is on settling cases as quickly as possible.
The Better Business Bureau, a business ethics and consumer protection agency, downgraded its rating of the firm from satisfactory to neutral after fielding 38 complaints over the past three years.
A judge ruled in June that the firm appeared to be "gouging" local taxpayers by seeking public funds to hire experts in two cases for which the firm already had collected thousands of dollars in fees from the clients.
Managing lawyers at the Pacific Law Center are defending their practice, and insist that they are providing adequate representation.
Robert Arentz, the managing partner, said that clerks act as fact gatherers and that no final agreement is ever signed without a lawyer first being brought in to talk to the clients. Arentz said all clients are told that the people they first speak to are not lawyers. "We have a lot of attorneys and a lot of clients," Arentz said. "It's easy to find individuals who have individual complaints about their individual situation.
Saying that it has a "lot of attorneys and a lot of clients" doesn't show a lot of confidence in the firm. There are law firms all over the state, and many in San Diego, with far more lawyers than the Pacific Law Center that a free of the allegations made against this firm. It would be one thing if it were just complaints by former clients, but number of complaints by lawyers formerly employed by the firm is staggering.
Court documents, as well as interviews with nearly a dozen lawyers who left the firm but did not sue, describe tactics by "legal assistants" who are not lawyers, who raise clients' expectations about what can be accomplished to get them to hire the firm. "There were a significant number of clients who didn't get what they thought they bought," said Charles Luckman, who worked as a criminal defense lawyer there from March 2004 to August 2006. "The best analogy I can give you is it was a law firm run like a used-car dealership." Luckman was one of three lawyers who sued after being fired last year. He reached a quick settlement with the firm, as did the other two lawyers.