Morgan King, Morganking.com, BankruptcyBooks.com, KingLawPublishing.com, King Bankruptcy Practice Series, King's Press Legal Publishing, Co., TaxJustice.com, BankruptcyAcademy.com, BankruptcyPractice.com Morgan King has multiple ethics violations and his BankrtupcyAcademy.com is a complete RIPOFF Dublin California

Morgan King is stuck in 1997 with his antiquated website and his materials which are delivered “old school” by U.S. Mail (don’t fall for the false advertising of online, on-demand, streaming video courses – that’s simply not available).  It took over two weeks to get his materials just to be left extremely disappointed by the defective DVD’s and high-school level materials.

Morgan King’s website contains false and misleading advertising and his actual “products” (at $1,500 - $4,500) are riddled with audio and video defects which render them unusable. Stay away from Morgan King’s antiquated and defective products as you will NOT be offered any refund once you discover the defects.

***UPDATE: Mr. King has multiple disciplinary actions by the California State Bar based upon various ethical violations committed by Mr. King which “harmed significantly a client, the public or the administration of justice” with “no mitigating circumstances.” (State Bar Disciplinary Action Case Number 03-O-04678 at calbar.ca.gov)– see the bottom of this review for details***

ANTIQUATED, AMATEURISH WEBSITE

The first thing that should have tipped me off to avoid Mr. King was the old, antiquated BankruptcyAcademy.com website which looks like it was built with the original Microsoft FrontPage software from 1997 (maybe I’m too harsh, for all I know it could have been FrontPage 2000).  It looks like someone backed up a dump truck full of CLIP ART and just dropped it all over the website.  Every other line of text is a different color (alternating red, blue, green) and it has those 1990’s vintage gif-like moving elements (like the flashing lights above the “ONLINE VIDEO” section).

FALSE ADVERTISING OF ONLINE, ON-DEMAND, STREAMING VIDEOS

However, the website clearly states “online video,” “24 hours of on-demand instruction,” “available online on an ‘on-demand’ basis” and “online on-demand streaming video course” while also showing a webcam with the word “STREAMING” running across it for the bankruptcy courses.  However, you will later find out that there are no online or streaming videos of the courses as advertised and good ol’ Mr. King doesn’t offer refunds.  Therefore, all these claims are false and fraudulent as later revealed by Mr. King’s admission that all online/on-demand videos were previously pulled off his website and haven’t been available for some time.

After my complaint (and his refusal to refund my money), Mr. King acknowledged his false advertising and agreed to take off ONE element of his misleading claims by stating “The word ‘streaming’ appeared on the course advertising-ordering web page, in the upper left corner of a graphic picture of a projector. This image has since been deleted.”  He says nothing about the nearly dozen claims that the courses are available “online, on-demand.”

COURSE SELECTION; DISPARAGEMENT AND OVERCHARGING

As a solo practice attorney without a staff, I was in need of “paralegal level” training with the basic bankruptcy forms and petition submission process.  Mr. King would later mock me for ordering paralegal level courses. I’m humble enough to acknowledge that paralegals do the “heavy lifting” for attorneys.  Unfortunately, I need to do my own heavy lifting and Mr. King shouldn’t disparage people that are looking for assistance.

In over 14 years of practice, I’ve taken dozens and dozens of paralegal courses as those courses teach the “in the trenches” skills that a SOLO ATTORNEY must have in order to survive without a staff and support.  Mr. King’s disparagement of my level of skill and my need for paralegal level training is beneath the professional level of conduct expected from an attorney and speaks volumes about Mr. King’s character (as does his multiple ethical violations and State Bar disciplinary actions).

However, no matter what course you order and no matter what your receipt shows, Mr. King simply sends his “entire” package to everyone and just charges an extra $3,000 when attorneys place the order. This is NOT indicated on the site at all and the courses themselves are broken up into “attorney” and “paralegal” course numbers and course levels with different materials and different pricing.  Mr. King shifts the blame for this false advertising and attacked me for “gaming the system” by purchasing the paralegal course which is the only course I wanted.

ORDER PROCESS AND “OLD SCHOOL” DELIVERY (US MAIL) NO STREAMING OR ONLINE COURSES AT ALL

After ordering the product, I received an email receipt showing the $1,512.95 for the “1001-A4 Paralegal Ungraded” course.  However, there was no information on accessing the online videos or the streaming courses.  I emailed Mr. King and he replied that “The video course itself was on WebEx, but Webex has some eccentricities that got in the way. So, after a few years we pulled them off and are now selling them as DVDs. The WebEx system is why some of the videos have flaws, such as freezing, low volume, and inability to be edited (and hence, inability to be kept current).”

Interesting…  So, some time ago, he pulled off the online and streaming video but kept all the advertising of those services on his website to pull in unsuspecting customers.  To be clear, the website doesn’t simply mention online, on-demand video, it touts the almost one-of-a-kind service by stating that BankruptcyAcademy.com “is one of the few courses that offer on-demand, 24-hour interactive video instruction” and “the videos are viewable online at any time, 24/7.”  They have a phrase to describe this: FALSE ADVERTISING.

Morgan King further warned in his email that “The reason the CD's and DVD's do not all have pretty labels printed on them is that the company that used to do our labels stopped doing small orders, and, as I said, we want to keep them current, so we only ordered a few. Naturally, we ran short. So, the scribble on the CD and DVD labels is my hand-writing, which never evolved past the 2d grade.”

No kidding… apparently no one in the whole of Mr. King’s office can print a DVD label from one of those fancy, fan-dangled, computer-type machine contraptions.  I don’t necessarily need a label on the materials, but for $1,500+ you would think someone in Mr. King’s office would learn how to use Avery labels in Word (oh, but maybe they are still using WordPerfect from 2001 and can’t find a compatible printer).

I was told in that same email from Mr. King that my “CDs went out today by U.S. Post” and that I should get it on Monday.  However, what I got the following week was an 8.5 x 11 letter in an #10 envelope stating that my “materials were enclosed.”  Where?  In the envelope? Clearly, there was nothing in the envelope other than the letter.  I again emailed Morgan King about the promised materials.  His assistant, Nancy Finley King, wrote back stating that she handles the shipping and she thought the box was going to be picked up from their office which just happens to be down the road from me about 9 HOURS AWAY. Then she said “there was a mix up with the carrier, so I took the box in the next day.”  I’m wondering if this is the same assistant that missed those filing deadlines which led to Mr. King’s ethical violations and disciplinary actions set forth below?

In the end it took OVER TWO WEEKS to get the “package” from Morgan King.  When I opened the package, my frustration turned to extreme disappointment.  What I received was two DVD’s inside paper sleeves, partially ripped and taped shut with scotch tape with illegible magic marker scribbled on the front of them.  To be clear, this is the main component of this course that costs thousands of dollars.

SHODDY AND DEFECTIVE MATERIALS

Muscling through my disappointment at paying over $1,500 for this mess and waiting over two weeks to get started, I pressed forward to get to the substance because it must be REALLY AMAZING STUFF for this price.  I loaded the first DVD and selected the very first course listed (actually, it’s the second course listed because the first “course” is nothing more than a link to the US Bankruptcy website with an online video from them).  So, in the second course (B1001-A), I was met with a recording of a WebEx video with absolutely no audio at all. That course is about an hour of the whole program and it has no audio at all. To recap, the first hour of the course is a link to the US Bankruptcy court website and the second hour has absolutely no audio at all (a very inauspicious start to say the least!).  The audio problem was verified on a second computer as well as on an old dusty DVD player I have in a second bedroom (we simply don’t use DVDs anymore, but I still had it for just such an occasion).  On all systems, there was no audio.  Who sends a product without even checking the very first actual video on the DVD?  Oh, that’s right, someone with a history of shoddy work that landed him in ethical violations and a history of State Bar discipline: That’s Mr. King!

Moving forward I jumped to the first course on CH13 as I’m very interested in that topic.  About 60 seconds into this DVD section, it was clear that Mr. King did little more than record his old WebEx sessions and put them on DVD.  The audio problems and playback issues he mentioned above (related to his discontinued online streaming video service) were simply recorded onto the DVD!  That means I am stuck watching the video while the audio cuts in and out throughout the whole course.  About 10 minutes into the session I couldn’t take it any longer and shut it off. Out of curiosity, I randomly picked another session on the DVD to see how bad it was, that session didn’t play at all (verified on another computer and on the DVD player) and froze my computer!!!

When reached for comment, Mr. King stated that “some of the recordings do, in fact, temporarily ‘Freeze.’ However, I explained that in my letter, and advised you that should that occur, you should just sit tight for a minute, not try to get the video to continue, don’t touch anything, and the video would resume shortly. And, this minor issue occurs on only two or three of the videos.”  Mr. King said I should try using “a headset, which boosts the auditory volume.”

So, only after you purchase the defective product (with “no refunds”) do you find out that multiple videos will arbitrarily “freeze” and you should wait a couple minutes and “don’t touch anything” and hope they come back on (does anyone remember the TRS-80 Micro Computer System from Tandy Corporation? google it).  This is the most pathetic response I’ve ever seen. The DVDs are garbage and there is no disclaimer on the website that Mr. King is selling DVDs that continually freeze or have no audio.

Besides the two DVDs, the “package” included a large book which was bound like a high school project with one of those plastic spiral binders which doesn’t really hold all the paper properly.  I also received what appears to be a used, outdated bankruptcy code book (which I have absolutely no use for as all our materials are online).

NO REFUNDS DESPITE THE MULTIPLE ACTS OF FALSE ADVERTISING AND THE COMPLETELY DEFECTIVE MATERIALS

I was absolutely stunned at the amateurish presentation and antiquated delivery of this “course” but I’m outraged that the actual product is a defective mess. Getting past the 1997 handwritten DVD presentation and the useless materials included, I simply couldn’t accept the defects in the actual product. As it is, the course is beyond useless.

Given the defects discovered above, I contacted Morgan King and his assistant Nancy Finley King at King’s Press Legal Publishing, Co. in Dublin, California, to request a refund of these materials.  In rejecting my request for a refund, Ms. Finley stated that “If you had refused the box, I could accept this and give a credit.”  I’m not sure how I would know the product was wildly defective without first opening it and attempting to view it.  Further, Ms. Finely-King stated, “Once a password is provided, it cannot be taken back.”  Again, I’m not sure what I needed a password for: There are no online videos and the only “materials” on the webpage are nothing more than a table of contents for the items on the DVD.

This bankruptcy “course” is a joke, dating back to the 1990’s.  The product is amateurish, defective and unusable. Steer clear of Morgan King and his BankruptcyBooks.com, KingLawPublishing.com, King Bankruptcy Practice Series, TaxJustice.com, BankruptcyAcademy.com, BankruptcyPractice.com and King’s Press Legal Publishing, Co. in Dublin, California, 94568.

*****MORGAN KING’S HISTORY OF STATE BAR DISCIPLINARY ACTIONS*****

I take partial blame (not a legal conclusion and cannot be used as an admission against a party opponent…) for this terrible misadventure into Mr. King’s BankruptcyAcademy.com products as I failed to look up Morgan King (a bankruptcy attorney) on the California State Bar website (Calbar.ca.gov) before purchasing his “materials.”  Had I done so I would have found that Morgan King (Morgan Howard Dean King State Bar #50887) has a record of multiple ethical violations and State Bar disciple, fines and public and private reprovals for ethical misconduct, legal incompetence and shoddy work which “harmed significantly a client, the public or the administration of justice” with “no mitigating circumstances.” (State Bar Disciplinary Action Case Number 03-O-04678 at calbar.ca.gov).   Yet this guy claims to be an educator?

In the “Aggravating Circumstances” of Attorney Morgan King’s Public Reproval, the State Bar listed Mr. King’s PRIOR RECORD OF DISCIPLINE.  Apparently, Mr. King was previously charged with ethical violations back on February 23, 2000 under case number 96-O-01925. The State Bar states that Mr. King committed two counts of violating California’s Business & Professions Code but those charges resulted in only a “Private Reproval” which is not available to the public. It is unclear what ethical violations Mr. King committed in 2000, but it is clear that Mr. King has a pattern of violating his ethical obligations.

Mr. King was required to report to the Office of Probation of the State Bar for a period of 1 year following his misconduct and submit written quarterly reports showing that Mr. King is complying with the law and his ethical obligations.  He also had to take continuing education courses in ethics and office management and had to go to “ethics school” and pass an ethics test.

These ethical violations and office management misconduct are important in understanding that Mr. King’s website and products are of the same failed character.  His disciplinary history and ugly stains on his reputation are well-deserved given Mr. King’s willingness to falsely advertise his garbage products and peddle useless, defective materials.