Law Office of James M Barrett

I had a few interactions with Jim in 2012 and can say that he is energetic, smart, and insightful with a quick, incisive mind. He also is experienced/​seasoned and well connected in the legal community, so if somebody is looking for a business attorney who, when necessary, would be consulting with or referring to an attorney doing wills and trusts or real estate or whatever other specialty is outside of the business attorney’s expertise area, Jim would be an obvious choice.
He has a dry sense of humor and is pleasant to converse with. Also, Jim is very low key and down-​to-​earth, which is something that ought to be valued by business owners who need legal services on a recurrent basis and often in the time of high stress and conflict.
Jim’s office location is very convenient — right on Castro with parking in front of the office building.

James Barrett has been my business attorney for the past 7 years since I started my first business. I can’t express how happy I am with his services. Now, two thriving business later, I contribute many of my success to Mr. Barretts’s help. He truly care for his clients and always does what’s in the best interest for the client. On many occasions, he helped us win cases and avoiding costly fees. Unlike other attorney, Mr. Barrett is easy to reach, and he always return calls within one business day. I always consult him for legal advices before taking actions. I trust him as my attorney and highly recommend him!

This attorney has been given a simple task to respond to two emails from two different organizations providing them with the general information about consumer rights to publish reviews on review sites like Unilocal.It was something that was needed to be done within 2 – 3 days. No research or investigation was needed, just general information that anyone can find on the internet. I was willing to pay some reasonable money for putting this information on a lawyer’s letterhead. I thought it was easy and would sound more authoritative if coming from a lawyer. I could hardly imagine how this could have gone wrong…
Mr. Barrett on his own initiative sent one letter where he presented himself as someone overseeing the kind of activity he was not even asked to look into. I was perfectly fine dealing with the service provider by myself on the issues Mr. Barrett decided to oversee all of a sudden. He somehow concluded that his task was not what he was asked to do by his client just to educate the service provider about my 1^st Amendment rights, he decided to think «outside the box» as I later realized to inflate his bill that would otherwise be no more than 200 – 300 dollars if he would have done exactly what he was asked to do.
It took multiple emails to explain to him that he was not asked to «oversee“anything but just to write this easy email. Amazingly he did not get it. After a month when I decided to give up on him he started to insist that by NOT writing an email he was contracted to write he helped me a lot. When told that his email is no longer needed he continued to come up with «versions» of something that still was not what he was asked to produce let alone that there was no more need for any emails from him.
After he has done NOTHING of what he was asked to do and what he said he was capable of doing he billed me for more than four thousand dollars and now I need to spend time to go into fee arbitration with him.
I am sure I will get this bill annulled, but my advice to anyone: just don’t even start with this really unique specialist of doing a lot of things you don’t need but never doing what you asked him to do even if this is as easy as writing an email with some general legal info that does not even require to know any details of the case.
If you have extra money to donate to this attorney you sure can consider that, but if you want someone who would do exactly what you need without replacing it with his own most likely damaging or just useless initiative, if you need someone who would listen to you and understand what you want and actually DO it in the reasonable time frame please go elsewhere.