CMS Law Firm LLC — Local services in Kirkland

looks like my situation was a fluke. I coulda swore id be giving a 5 star review just like the 26 other 5 star reviews. My situation is simple, ive been dealing with my moms estate for 16 yrs, and have been had by 2, horrible & incompetent lawyers out of Vancouver, Washington. (maybe thats why, cuz i badmouthed my previous lawyers?? well its true, 16 years to settle an estate, not returning phone-calls, and providing bogus information sounds pretty incompetent to me, especially when ive done most of the legwork myself). the only thing preventing the closure of the estate is the taxes owed to IRS. No one was sure what the bill actually was or if statute of limitations took place. After speaking with Suzanne at CMS law firm, i became quite confident that i found the right ppl for the job, and someone whom i could finally trust. The only thing holding me back was that i didnt have all of the money at the time, so i was waiting to get paid for my PR duties through my current lawyer, he told me July 10 was the court date, well when i called him on july 9th he mentioned he just forgot to tell me that the court date was pushed back several month due to Covid ( just one more lame excuse for coming up short), so instead of waiting i just borrowed the money from my GF to get the ball rolling. When i went to contact her through email i noticed that she had sent an email stating to let her know when i had access to the estate acct, but instead i could only let her know i had to borrow the money. She promptly replied with "im sorry its not going to work out, there are too many unknowns". Yea right, soon as they realized i had to borrow money and that i didnt have access to the lump sum sitting inside the estate, they dropped me like a bad habit. when i asked for a more detailed explanation why, all i got back was crickets.....just wanted to share my experiance to hopefully prevent anyone else from waisting their time that might be in a similar...

Update: Chris reached out and I have updated my review from 1 star to reduce the negative impact on his business. He clarified that Will no longer works there and the email (from Will) and calendar invite (from Chris) were automated from their lead generation system (book appointment button) on google... which apparently has been misconfigured for a long time. While these things can happen, it is up to the business owner to ensure business systems they setup for dealing with clients are working properly. If there is not expertise in house to ensure these systems are properly configured, then they should not be setup to begin with (stick with direct email/phone)...otherwise you have exactly the situation that happened to me which is incredibly frustrating (and a waste of my time).

--- original review ---

Unreliable.

Requested a call to discuss my estate planning situation. Apparently these are intro/sales calls where I brief them to "see if they can help" and setup billing stuff....totally fine, I don't expect anyone to work for free.

Received confirmation email from Will confirming and reminding me of the appointment that he would call me at the designated time (11AM Monday).

Scheduled my day around the appointment and made sure I had all my notes together and a quiet place with good reception to take the call.

No call ever came. After 20 or so minutes I replied to Will asking him if we were still having the call...never received any reply (it is now Friday). Big waste of my time because organized my day around this call.

Maybe there is a valid reason why they were so unreliable in this case, but given they confirmed the call and then apparently ghosted me (wasting my time in the process)... it creates a very bad first impression. One might wonder: if this is how they treat new business...how well are they going to treat business they have...

The staff at CMS Law Firm worked closely with me to customize my updated estate planning documents. My case presented a tight schedule challenge triggered by an unexpected untimely loss of a prior estate planning professional. Chris Small exhibited a great can-do attitude and within the initial consultation he indicated an intention to commit to the task. The cost quoted in advance was reasonable and was sustained for the completed job.

It is apparent that this firm applies a realistic level of automation to efficiently manage its caseload throughout the lifecycle of its relation with a client. Their approach preserves personalized service by streamlining the more commonplace functions. A comprehensive induction questionnaire is utilized to acquire essential information and enable refined recommendations for the approach to achieving the client’s goals. I especially appreciated the opportunity to submit my own draft text for unique elements of the estate planning. The appropriate legal wording and text placement were applied to integrate my desired customization into the estate plan framework. A draft of the complete estate planning portfolio was rapidly produced and delivered electronically for my review. The interactive document review process afforded broad flexibility in the accepted methods of submitting feedback and proceeded with virtually immediate responsiveness from Suzanne Lieberman. The witnessed document signing occurred right on time as promised.

My lasting perception is that employees of CMS Law Firm work cohesively with a singular objective of satisfying all aspects of their client’s estate plan requirements. In all phases of the process I felt that I was provided the factual guidance and control to achieve my unique objectives without sensing any sort of judgmental or...