From Cal-Lawyer
Cal-Lawyer PLC is a boutique law firm specializing in protecting our client's life, liberty and property. The divisions include Cal-Probate, Cal-Evict and Cal-Defender. Practice areas include wills and trust litigation, real estate and civil and criminal defense. The firm is managed by Daniel J. Tripathi, an award winning trial attorney. Mr. Tripathi obtained his undergraduate degree from the University of Southern California where he majored in Systems Engineering. His Juris Doctor is from Southwestern University School of Law, where he was a member of the prestigious SCALE program. He is admitted to practice in the state of California (Bar no. 245317) and the United States Central District Courts in California.
Google: 4.8/5 
Facebook: 3/5 
BBB: No Rating
Cal-Lawyer, Mr. Tripathi, was recommended to me by a paralegal. A mistake. My probate needs took twice as long as they should have due to numerous, astounding office mistakes along the way, many of which I caught myself, not the staff. At the end they tried to charge me for time spent correcting their mistakes. I also did not trust that my case was being handled correctly nor was of any importance to them. I was expected to abide by the retainer contract but they did not. In over a year, I received only two sets of invoices, at my request, but no statements, which the contract said would be provided regularly. The invoices were sent without any explanation as to what payment was due, if any, until I asked. Those in training were not well supervised by the lawyer or others; reading and editing mistakes, asking for info they already had on hand, spelling errors, grammatical and capitalization errors. The firm just did not seem professionally run as I expected it would be. A very frustrating, stressful experience for me!!!
Large turn over of office employees. Office employees promise to call you back with info, rarely does. It takes 3-6 weeks to get simple answer or paperwork completed. Head office employee complains she has too many cases. Simple eviction has taken over 7 months and is still ongoing. Additional fees charged after initial fee paid, never informed about add on fees. If I could give a zero star I would.
It is generally difficult to know how good or bad an attorney's office is before actually hiring and working with them. That's why many people might rely on reviews on the Web when they are making decisions. Based on stellar reviews on Google, I decided to work with Cal-Lawyer for our UD case in 2022. However, now after 8 months working with them, I feel like I wouldn't hire them again for several reasons. Those reasons are highlighted below.(1) Communication within their office - the person who pick up the phones and answer the call do not have any idea regarding my case. On top of that, no clear communication between the management attorney (Mr. Dan Tripathi) and other people in his office. This makes their clients call several times and wait for many days without getting any clear guidance and information. They even put the re-filing fee which was necessary due to their mistakes (error and typos in the legal document) to my invoice for payment. This example tells me that the internal communication between different parties within Cal-Lawyer office isn't quite optimal.(2) Simple error and typos in the legal documents - When I received a copy for one of the legal documents they filed for our case, I found several critical errors in the document. The document was already signed by the managing attorney (Mr. Dan Tripathi) and submitted to the court. I was able to locate that errors in a couple of minutes when I start reviewing the document. This indicates me two things - one, the office workers who drafted the document are not careful enough (or knowledgeable enough for my case), and two, the managing attorney did not have time to carefully review the entire document for its accuracy before putting his signature on it and file it to the court.(3) Professionalism - when it comes to professionalism, I feel it is important for the attorney's office to give an impression that they respects their clients' time. I did not really feel that from Cal-Lawyer. One time, I scheduled a call with the managing attorney (Mr. Dan Tripathi) for a certain time on a certain date, but I had to wait for 30 min without any call or notification from the attorney's office. I finally became frustrated, and decided to call the attorney's office, but the person who picked up the phone said that the attorney was with another clients now so they can reschedule my call with the attorney... I can understand they can get a bit behind of the schedule if something urgent comes up, but they still should understand that they would have been much more professional if they had a chance to call me and explained this delay around the appointment time.These are just a few examples. Overall quality of service and professionalism did not meet my standard. Not recommended.