Legal Shield Prepaid Legal Deceptive advertising, poor counsel, condescending and dismissive treatment, constant up-selling Chicago Nationwide

My business partner defrauded the company I started 100% with my own capital. He stole money from the company accounts for months and then stole products from the company to sell privately. By the time I learned what was going on, the company was bankrupt. Desperate for legal counsel, I began submitting requests online for legal help. Legal Shield contacted me, listened to me detail my case, then told me they could help me. It wasn’t until later that I learned the individual who was speaking to me so consolingly was a sales agent and not a lawyer.

It took me several attempts over two weeks to sign up with Legal Shield. They made multiple technical mistakes advising me about the packages to purchase, and I had to buy new memberships both for myself (personal) and my defunct business. This should have been a warning, since the sales people don't appear knowledgeable about the products they're selling, let along the actual legal processes involved for which consumers are contracting. While Legal Shield representatives are very friendly while you're signing up for service, don’t expect that level of courtesy if there's a problem or from their legal affiliates.

I was assigned a law firm in Chicago. From the very beginning, the service couldn’t have been ruder. It’s understandable the lawyers are all busy, but it’s very clear when they speak with you that you’re bothering them. The attorney assigned to my case was condescending and dismissive. He would regularly interrupt me and several times told me, “I don’t know what that means,” in reference to other legal documents I shared with him–business documents already registered with my state. I asked him explicitly what I should do at several times, and it was like pulling teeth. He acted as if I were bothering him and he wanted to rush me off the phone. He claimed not to understand most of what I was asking him and not to understand a business ontract I'd already filed with my state successfully. And it is very clear the law firm you’re assigned to wants to redirect you to contracting with affiliated attorneys. It's as if the law firm Legal Shield assigns you to works especially hard to be demeaning and abrasive and to feign ignorance about your legal matter so they can justify telling you to pay thousands to contract with other attorneys. One wonders what financial arrangment these up-sold attorney offices have with both Legal Shield and the law firm Legal Shield initially assigns you to.

The first few attorneys the Chicago law firm Legal Shield assigned me to never even got back to me. Clearly, I didn't matter at all to these people. There is a massive disconnect between the sales end of Legal Shield and the actual legal services, over which Legal Shield has little control. Finally, a Saint Louis, MO law firm agreed to work with me. Thousands of dollars later, all that came of that consult was a default judgment because the party being sued refused to show up in court, realizing the legal team could do noting to coerce him. Since the lawyer I consulted with chose to pursue the issue as a civil rather than criminal matter (despite detailed banking statements showing unauthorized withdrawals and an obvious theft of company products and property–all purchased with my personal credit cards), the default judgment is toothless. I would have to spend many thousands more just to TRY to get the other party to pay pennies on the dollar.

Moreover, the original Chicago law firm advised me to let my business lapse by not paying the fee on the business. When I tried to file my taxes for the current year, I learned this was not the correct way to close a business. You must file paperwork with the state and final taxes; failure to file appropriate paperwork leaves you open to potentially costly tax audits going forward. I contacted both Legal Shield and their partner law firm on learning this from several CPAs and business tax specialists but was quickly rebuffed, told I had been counseled about officially dissolving the company. I had explicitly asked for advice on how to proceed, never recall a conversation about formal dissolution, and more, the hurried counsel I did get repeatedly–letting the company lapse–has since placed me in a precarious position regarding taxes. Legal Shield denies any responsibility here, of course, and the law firm I’d originally dealt with (partners with Legal Shield) callously denies any responsibility for the advice they gave and which I followed. One of their managing attorneys claims that the dissolution conversation is in their notes and they had no responsibility to share any counsel with me in writing, and they are not responsible if I didn't understand what was being said. So much for Legal Shield's advertisement about being in your corner (from their website on 14 March 2017, "Life is unpredictable. You never know what's around the corner. LegalShield gives you the confidence of knowing whatever comes your way, your provider law firm is there when you need it.") In the final discussion with Legal Shield’s corporate relations department, Corporate Relations Specialist Joe Kennedy told me the law firm Legal Shield puts clients in contact with "does not advise clients on how to proceed on the legal matters we present with." For that, Mr. Kennedy said, we need to retain a private attorney (costly). So, I might as well have contracted with an attorney myself in advance.

So Legal Shield has washed its hands of the entire matter they originally claimed they could help me with, after having happily accepted months and months of payments from me only to have me find myself now facing bankruptcy. This company and its legal network substantiate the stereotype of the purely mercenary legal organization. Its sales department feigns concern for you only to get you to sign up with a recurring membership and hopefully up-sell you on vastly more expensive private legal services via Legal Shield’s subsidiary legal phone services companies which treat you like so much social detritus. Citizens ought not only to share widely our experiences with Legal Shield and its subsidiaries but also to contact the appropriate legal oversight boards in our home states to lodge formal complaints.