William S. Brodak, Attorney At Law

WARNING — Will Brodak quoted me $ 2,000 for a family trust over the phone. I filled out 9 or so pages of detailed family and financial info for our initial appointment. He tried to get me to commit to paying him $ 500 for the initial meeting before we reached agreement on his fee. Put on notice, I focused our initial meeting on his $ 2,000 quote which he stated he could NOT remember! GET ALL QUOTES IN WRITING FROM HIM! At that meeting he also focused on his $ 425/​hour fee, quoted us $ 600 to redo the deed to our home, tried to charge us $ 500 for the meeting itself which mainly focused on jumping his fee from $ 2,000 to $ 3,500. I said we’d go elsewhere for $ 3,500. WE SHOULD HAVE LEFT THEN. Time was short so we decided to just bite the bullet. We agreed to pay Mr. Brodak $ 3,000 for the basic estate planning package, trust, will, living will, & durable POA’s plus re-​deeding our home. We needed it completed in a month, before we departed overseas. We gave Mr. Brodak a short list of exactly how we’d like everything handled at our passing so he could make efficient use of his time. We provided all information he requested the same day it was requested. We paid half the fee in advance.
I was absolutely shocked, when shortly before our planned departure date Mr. Brodak emailed me stating it was necessary to revisit our fee agreement because he had to rush to make the deadline — the deadline he originally agreed at our first meeting! I was completely shocked and dismayed at his obvious misconduct.
I contacted the California Bar Association, downloading their complaint form. I then asked Mr. Brodak to either perform the work as he originally agreed to do or return our $ 1,500 deposit. However, his blatant misconduct ruined whatever trust or confidence we had in Mr. Brodak. Since he was unhappy with his fee, we have no confidence in his work. We are forced to now shop for another attorney and forced to go to the additional expense of having his work reviewed for errors and omissions.
I’m acquainted with, have worked with a number of attorneys over the years. I’ve never run into any ethical problems with any of the many other attorneys I’ve worked with until Mr. Brodak. Accordingly, I consider him the exception. I will never work with him again. I’ve noted my displeasure in the estate planning documents he prepared. Neither I nor anyone I know will work with Mr. Brodak.

Will Brodak was recommended by a business aquaintance of my financial advisor. I called and spoke to Will on Wednesday looking to schedule a consultation to get help with assisted living, long term nursing, VA benefits, and Medi-​Cal approval planning for my 92 year old father. I spoke to him for a few minutes and he quoted me $ 425/​hour for the consultation, asked for my email address and said he would send me some forms that needed to be filled out prior to our meeting. I wasn’t sure I was going to schedule a meeting, but I figured I would wait until I received his email and read over the forms before making a decision.
About four hours later, I received his email with a 9 page attachement that wanted me to disclose personal and financial information about my parents. I didn’t feel comforatable releasing this information to someone I had just met, only by phone and then, there was the hefty payment I was going to have to pay up front without knowing what I was getting in return. I decided that I needed to ask a lot of questions first before I could make an educated decision on whether or not to schedule a consultation.
In my email reply to Mr. Brodak, I said I thought 9 pages of detailed personal and financial information for a consultation was a bit excessive and asked him to explain why he needed it. I also stated the initial consultation should be to discuss our options, what he can do for us, what his fees would be to help us prepare an assisted and long term nursing plan, and to see if he is a good fit for us. I let him know that although I visited his web site, it didn’t provide any imformaiton on his experience with regard to Medi-​Cal, VA benefits, trusts, assisted care, or long term nursing. I asked him to provide details of his experience in all these areas, success rates, and guarantees he provides for his services.
Mr. Brodak sent me a reply in which he said «Based on your questions and requests below, it doesn’t appear that you would be a good fit as a client for my practice.» I honestly felt my questions were fair and my tone was cordial, but he either took offense or just didn’t want to take the time to answer all my questions. It’s odd that a professional wouldn’t want to answer questions like, what’s your experience in this area? Or, what’s your success rate, your guarantees? Why wouldn’t he post these things on his web site? Then, there’s the $ 425\hour consultation fee, aren’t most initial consultaions free?
Anyway, I can not comment on Mr. Brodak’s knowledge or expertise in any area because I wasn’t given the opportunity to get that far, but I can tell you that he made me feel like billable hours was his priority and the second I didn’t do exactly what he wanted me to, he dropped me like a bad habit!