| I've revised my attitude about this. I'm just going to keep it strictly business. He never bothered to even look at it, as demonstrated by his request to have it sent to him. Now he'll need to go through it. Took Marcy 14 hours to assemble. I'll ask him to review it and let us know where we may have erred. We can always settle for less to avoid litigation. As for the former client funds he's requesting, I'll address that later. For now, we're ignoring it. Not doing anything until next week. Merry Christmas, partner! N Neal A. Puckett, Esq LtCol, USMC (Ret) Puckett & Faraj, PC 1800 Diagonal Rd, Suite 210 Alexandria, VA 22314 703.706.9566 The information contained in this electronic message is confidential, and is intended for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, you are hereby notified that any use, distribution, copying of disclosure of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you received this communication in error, please notify Puckett & Faraj, P.C. at 703-706-9566 or via a return the e-mail to sender. You are required to purge this E-mail immediately without reading or making any copy or distribution. On Dec 23, 2011, at 6:47 PM, Haytham Faraj wrote: This is ok. It may be more fruitful if you approach him with a spirit of cooperation. The main objective is to get paid. While he was certainly wasting time taking care of his firm, you don’t need to make that accusation, at least not right now, because that will put him on the defensive. From: Neal A. Puckett [mailto:neal@puckettfaraj.com] Sent: Friday, December 23, 2011 4:58 PM To: Haytham Faraj Subject: DRAFT proposed reply to Eric DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT Partner, Please edit my work. N Eric, You had no authority to grant billing concessions. Thus we cannot ratify them. All invoices and accounting were included in the final bill cc: you. Re: Your recommended way ahead; you have them. You did not capture all expenses for Hashimy in several of the months, primarily in phone calls. If we have made errors regarding specific calls, please feel free to correct them with supporting documentation. But we went line-by-line through every phone bill for this year. As to the last bill, it didn't capture all of your calls from Afghanistan. All of that needs to be billed either to a client or paid by you. Shortly I'll be sending YOUR bill from the firm for personal calls made while overseas. You did tell Bethany that Hashimy's phone bill should be $2K. But one amount I was certain was NOT the total of phone calls for Hashimy was exactly $2,000.00. You can't just WAG expenses to clients. You have to take the time to pay attention and itemize. It was clear that in your haste to set up a competing law firm and clear out of here, you did not even look at the phone bill to certify which calls were to be billed to which client. Thus you absolutely DID skip over $6000 in phone charges. Again, that amount either needs to come from your clients or you. It certainly will take some time for you to review the work. But the errors are absolutely attributable to you. Because our audit found those errors. It was solely your responsibility to scrutinize your own phone account and accurately bill clients. V/r, Neal A. Puckett, Esq LtCol, USMC (Ret) Puckett & Faraj, PC 1800 Diagonal Rd, Suite 210 Alexandria, VA 22314 703.706.9566 The information contained in this electronic message is confidential, and is intended for the use of the individual or entity named above. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, you are hereby notified that any use, distribution, copying of disclosure of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you received this communication in error, please notify Puckett & Faraj, P.C. at 703-706-9566 or via a return the e-mail to sender. You are required to purge this E-mail immediately without reading or making any copy or distribution. On Dec 23, 2011, at 4:15 PM, Eric Montalvo wrote: Neal, The new person you hired appears to be unfamiliar with handling attorney accounts. Neither of us need to be hung up on mishandling stuff like this so please provide her guidance. I have reviewed the applicable VA regs myself to ensure that I also have the proper understanding and based upon that and other research please see the following: I was presented each telephone bill as they came in on a monthly basis and identified the expenses to be attributed. I am not sure what happened to that paperwork, but suffice it to say I am certain I did not skip over 6,000 dollars in phone charges and I doubt you missed this as well. With regard to the last trip I broke out the amounts on the phone bill and I reconciled with Bethany. It is my understanding that each client had been invoiced the amount and this could be considered to be double billing. I don’t know what happened but this is going to require me to go through all of the relevant invoices to validate the bills. I did no work for Hashimy in one of the months. I was trying to ensure he paid you the 50k he owed the firm. I told him we would credit him on the phone bill (what wound up to be about 2k if I recall of the phone bill toward that months bill) I will also note that of the close to 200k in fees I had never previously credited him. I ensured that he made what appeared to be his remaining payment even after I left the firm with no obligation to do so which was not acknowledged. I know that Bethany was aware of that and I believe I remember that she conveyed that to you. If you want to override that concession then go ahead but don’t attribute it to my oversight because that’s not true. I would advise against providing the client phone bills with other client information in it as I would construe that to be protected information. Way ahead – I need all of the invoices associated with Hashimy and the AT&T bills and any other invoice that contained phone charges so that I can determine what the right number is because right now I cannot concur in the number you have derived. This will obviously take some time to sort through. A couple of other items for efficiency sake: Please remove the following link from your website for many obvious reasons: http://www.puckettfaraj.com/attorneys/eric-montalvo/ Please remit the amounts for the following clients: Drilow, Gary - $ 1500.00 of $3000.00 unearned fees Mata, Marin - $ 5000.00 of $5000.00 unearned fees Middleton, Jeremy - $ 3500.00 of $5000.00 unearned fees Hoffman-McHale, Catherine - $ 2500.00 of $5000.00 unearned fees I was informed that this had been reviewed and taken care of. I think you will find that these estimates are very conservative. If there is a dispute on a client then please provide an itemized client billing as required. R/ Eric S. Montalvo Founding Partner <image001.jpg> 1150 Connecticut Ave., NW, Suite 900 | Washington, DC 20036-4129 Attorney/Client Privileged, Protected and Confidential Communication. Practice is limited to matters and proceedings before Special Courts - Federal Courts - Agencies. Confidentiality / Privilege Notice: This transmission, including attachments, is intended solely for the use of the designated recipient(s). This transmission may contain information that is confidential and/or privileged or otherwise protected from disclosure. The use or disclosure of the information contained in this transmission for any purpose other than that intended by its transmittal is strictly prohibited. If you are not an intended recipient of this transmission, please immediately destroy all copies received and notify the sender. |