James E. Crawford Jr. Esq. - Linthicum Heights, MD

Be cautious when considering JCLaw (long review, but important details included). I first hired this firm in October 2021, and my experience at that time was positive. Based on that, I returned in April 2025 for a separate legal matter, choosing to overlook their current Google rating (3.8 and today 4.2). In hindsight, that was a mistake. When I hired them in April 2025, I provided the requested escrow funds. After a week with no communication, I followed up and discovered they had used an outdated email address, the one from 2021 instead of my current one (and this should have been a warning of things to come). I made additions to my escrow account as needed and in July of 2025 the attorney I was working with left the firm. I was then assigned a new “team” consisting of (from what I could tell), a paralegal, a junior and a senior attorney. Over the following two weeks, I sent several emails requesting updates on my case and received no response. Based on the lack of communication, I terminated their services. That night, about 8pm, I get a phone call from the junior attorney. He asked if I would reverse my decision to terminate and I said no, he continued, he stated that he did not get my emails the last two weeks (3 of them), but did get today's. He then said he could show me a screenshot of his emails showing mine weren't there. I then told him, I have almost 40 years of IT experience, all your screenshot proves is that you deleted the emails prior to taking the screenshot. He proceeded to repeat himself (multiple times) ignoring what I said. Now we get to the grievances. In August about 4 weeks after termination, I had yet to get my escrow refund (after having inquired many times about it). So, I filed a grievance. I then went to look at my invoices; I noticed many erroneous charges. This resulted in grievance number 2. During the discussions with JCLaw and the grievance committee I went back over my invoices and discovered 2 missing invoices, the very first one regarding my escrow and the very last one. The first invoice I believe went to the old email account. The very last one, I suspect, did also, in an attempt to hide charges to my account. The last one showed that post termination they charged me for sending my case to my new attorney (other than unethical, it's illegal according to the Bar Association). This resulted in my updating of my 2nd grievance. The first grievance got their attention and eventually the refund of my escrow. The 2nd one was a major confrontation. A senior partner and I had many emails back and forth, and, at one point I thought we had a settlement on the erroneous charges; wrong, when asking when I would be getting my check, they did it again, ghosted me. I withdrew my agreement (considering what I had to do to get the escrow refund, I had no choice), and was accused of reneging. I went back to the grievance committee announcing this. During all this the senior partner sent an email stating, all my invoices were attached, nope, none were attached. When I responded, he insisted that his email showed the attachments. At that point, I told him I have almost 40 years of IT experience, and one of two things happen to attachments. First, they aren't attached, the second, if attached and not received the email server sends a message that the attachments were not sent (#2 did not happen). Again, he insisted I was wrong. In the end I did settle on the erroneous invoice charges (for less than I wanted) and did withdraw my grievances.