Please read this review -- after seeing other 1-star reviews and hearing echoes of what I **also** experienced, I feel validated & grateful to know that I'm not overreacting. I think they're probably "5-stars" for clients they deem worthy of helping, but 100% 1-stars to people like myself, who they find distasteful, I suppose!
The "please don't be angry, go somewhere else if you need help" review in 2017 captures exactly how tonedeaf & entitled they are -- not understanding a very basic & obvious fact that people seeking legal help probably have a TON of reasons to be angry, frustrated, stressed, and anxious.
These people are total and utter shitters; seems like they're only after cases that can generate either money or ~publicity~ in a fucked up sense of "moral justice", which is incredibly rich considering I'm both a leftist and Asian myself. (Of course this wasn't information I revealed, because my political leanings and ethnicity are frankly irrelevant.) I've never in my entire life needed to potentially retain a lawyer or attorney; I'm a firm believer in trying to solve things without the interference of the law, and certainly without the police.
I called them only because it was on a list of phone numbers on a pdf file given to me by the Sunnyvale Housing Mediation Team (Project Sentinel). A very recent subtenant moved in -- one week before I signed my agreement with the master tenant myself -- who has refused to pay rent, and refuses to even talk with me about how her very young and untrained puppy is peeing all over my living space (the living room; I live in a converted situation). This has left me and my very young roommate (who herself is a foreign student from Vietnam, and honestly too trusting) in a lurch; we've had to cover for this new subtenant's rent without any possibility of recouping that cost, plus the daunting possibility that this subtenant could continue to squat and not enable us to find a replacement roommate who would actually be serious about taking on the appropriate financial responsibility (or at the very least, be open to normal avenues of communication between mature adults to work out any solutions to possible problems).
I left all of these details, abbreviated, in the voicemail; the phone call was promptly returned by a kind representative who gave me a litany of further details for doing an "intake" with them. I found that extremely formal, as I was only looking for the answer to a single question: Do I need a lawyer in this situation? What should I do hypothetically if the subtenant refuses to leave after the 30 days are up? I wasn't planning on immediately retaining their services, nor did I feel entitled to their services; I assume that if they couldn't help me, they'd let me know -- but in a polite and kind fashion. At the very least I assumed they'd let me know if a lawyer was needed -- at all.
When I connected with the actual attorney, both he and the assistant were quite rude in telling me that they don't "deal with people acting as landlords", and the attorney in particular wouldn't even tell me if I **needed** a lawyer, or perhaps Sunnyvale Mediation was overreacting and giving me incorrect advice. If there were legal reasons why he couldn't impart this information, that wasn't told to me either.
When I told them to please inform the representative who first took my information down that they don't "take cases like mine" so that other people's time (and dignity, tbh) could be saved, I was MUTED from the conference call, though somehow I wasn't hung up on -- maybe so they can feign technological breakdown. (Also what case?! There's no case yet! I'm literally asking "should I be prepared for a case?" lmao) The way I was treated like a sexist caricature of a nagging harpy and/or horrible evil Karen out to evict people for fun ... was really quite something. I'm still out the money I covered for rent, and I still am unable to fully move into my new place. But of course! I'm just some evil person who is positively excited at the prospect of being party to evicting someone for the first time in her entire life!! Never mind the fact that this subtenant who is failing to pay rent has extremely well-off parents, and that me and the master tenant are between employment and a student, respectively.
I'm glad to know that if I ever need legal assistance in any other fashion, I know for SURE which firm I wouldn't be giving my business to. Thanks for letting me know straight up. Not all skinfolk are kinfolk, as they say read more