Copenbarger & Copenbarger LLP

In April of this year my dad arranged a Zoom meeting with Mark O’Brien from Copenbarger&Copenbarger’s Santa Ana location to go over the my late mother’s living trust. The meeting was on 4/17. First of all, Mark arrived 8 minutes late to the Zoom meeting, and he claimed that his camera was malfunctioning, so we never even saw his face. During the meeting he advertised his services to us, claiming the first 30 minutes of the meeting were of no cost to us. We did not want to go over the 30 minutes so we made sure to ask him multiple times to confirm we were not going over the time. He told us we were not going over the time. He told us that his legal assistant, Silvi, would send us the documents from the meeting for free so we did not need to take notes. This is standard procedure. Later on that day, Silvi wrote a follow up email to ask if we would pursue the additional legal services. No documents were attached. At the time we had not decided yet. I kindly asked her to send us the documents, assuming it had just been an oversight on her part. She eventually sent the documents many days later with (what seemed like) much less zest than how she sent the retainer agreement. No acknowledgement that she had not performed the task she was assigned. Understandably, with the show for little attention to detail or customer service, we were not compelled to go with their offices for legal services. Over a month later we received a bill from their offices for an apparent 5 minutes that Mark had gone over the half hour in our legal consultation. We had not gone over 30 minutes in total. I had made sure to write back explaining the delayed Zoom, assuming this was another oversight. Sarah from their office refused to look into the situation and steadfastly asked for the money. My senior dad, exhausted with grief and wanting to avoid confrontation, paid the charges. We thought this would take care of the correspondence/bills for good. My dad received mail today that he was still being charged for the $43.50 that he had (unnecessarily) paid on 6/15. It makes me wonder how many others this is happening to. And how many just take the charges (whatever amount they may be) and are not willing to speak up. Should I give them the benefit of the doubt one more time and assume that this was yet another oversight? I plan to contact them again about these charges and will update this post if this becomes satisfactorily resolved.

This firm does not communicate but is eager to continue to bill you. No updates on your case, just silence and bills. They will switch who is handling your case then make you do all the paperwork over because somehow they don't have it anymore. Paid, notorized paperwork. They address letters to the deceased, send emails to the wrong clients with private information then lie about why it happened. They just sent a threat letter, addressed to the deceased claiming a bill wasn't paid in January and they're SUSPENDING out account -note the bill was paid and they cashed the check and they also cashed one just a couple days ago so there's no missed payments. All while, despite being BEGGED for updates, keeping the trustee in the dark. Expect close to two years to close a trust

Both my daughter and I used Copenbarger & Copenbarger LLP for each of our Estate Planning and for each of our Trusts. Our entire experience from the initial phone contact to the completion signings of the documents was effortless and thoroughly professional. We would like to thank the following members of the Copenbarger team: Mark Krause, Victoria Rayman, Katherine Grout, Diane Johnston and Chris Carroll. Copenbarger & Copenbarger LLP are legal experts and we recommend them unquestionably for any Estate Planning and Trust needs. Florence Mitnick

We met with this firm in September of 2024,not a very complicated Estate,only child only heir.No distributions needed,that was handled on our own.Throughout the process we had a terrible time getting our questions answered,barely getting timely answers and then being billed for asking such questions,which is by design.They keep you in the dark forcing you to reach out only to be billed for reaching out.Every person assigned to our Estate wasn't truthful.We provided all documents required only to have to wait months for a simple house transfer and deed update that we ultimately filed ourselves.We had been lied to about that process also but paid heavily for it.To be fair we used an attorney from another C&C office to do a Power of Attorney prior to death and that was done well.My opinion is if your Inherited Estate is under a million they take a calculated risk on overcharging and milking you for more money based on the hassle of fighting them vs the amount of money you have.They also sent their deceased client an invite to their 2026 conferences 16 months after death. If they can make that kind of an insensitive error I wonder what others occur.We ultimately got some money back utilizing court appointed arbitration.In a nutshell,use someone else.