Bradley T Steele Law Offices

Owner response

I can find no record of you hiring our firm and yet you know Kevin Oden, my employee. I'm wondering if you used another name? In any event, your medical expenses are always your responsibility to pay. Typically, if the client instructs us to pay it, we do so out of your portion of the settlement. If we issue a letter of protection promising to pay the provider, then we do so, and we negotiate that amount downward on thec client's behalf as well. I suspect in this instance you did not want your medical bills paid from the settlement and now are taking the position that we should have paid your bills for you out of our attorneys fees. No lawyer does this. Please advise if you used a different name and I'll be happy to look into it further. Brad Steele, Attorney

Owner response

I wanted to reply publicly to your comments of 2021. To be honest, I haven't paid a lot of attention to Google reviews but your comment, which I just recently read, really struck a nerve with me, to call us crooks. So, I went back and reviewed your file. Your mva occurred on 08-02-2020. You hired my firm 4 days later and agreed to a 40% contingency fee for our attorneys fees, which means if we don't recover any monies for you, you owe us nothing. This is a standard percentage charged by a large majority of attorneys practicing personal injury law. Our employment contract states that expenses we advance on your file are reimbursed to us first off the top of the settlement before either you or I are paid. Then, we deduct our 40% leaving you the majority, or, 60%. A lot of firms charge the expenses to the client's side but we do not. That way, the case finances itself rather than the client financing it. As you are aware, you incurred thousands of dollars in medical expenses that YOU owed for your treatment. A client's medical expense is never the responsibility of the lawyer--it always remains the client's responsibility to pay. You understood that when you hired us and when you settled your case. However, in order to put more money in your pocket, we reduced our fee from 40% to 33 1/3%. That is hardly something a crook would do. We were not required to do it but did it anyway so as to benefit you. When you say that any normal lawyer pays the clients medical off the top, you are simply incorrect. NO LAWYER DOES THAT. We prepared a written settlement breakdown and went over it with you line-by line and you signed off on it signifying that you understood it and agreed with it. We negotiated with all of your medical providers and they all agreed to reduce their bills in order to be paid. Using part of your 60%, we paid all of those bills on your behalf as we had promised the providers we would do in order for you to receive treatment. You state that we received almost $30,000 more than you but that is not true-it's just that you owed the medical providers for treatment that you received. Mrs. Latham, I'm sorry that you were upset about this but no one made you settle your case. You were not cheated nor were you lied to. We are not thieves in this office. In fact, I sleep well at night knowing my clients have been well-represented and treated with dignity and respect and that we have been open and honest with our clients. To the best of my knowledge, you have never called and asked to speak to me. I would be happy to discuss it with you if you do. Brad Steele, Attorney.

Owner response

Thank you for the 5 star review. We appreciate it!