I’ve never seen reason to put the words “arrogant” and “German” together because I’ve always found the Germans to be hospitable, nice, thoughtful, rational and well organized people with a clean and reliable public transport system, excellent beer and a manufacturer of great cars. I’ve worked with Germans on a number of occasions and will do so in the future, though if you “Google” the aforementioned words you find there is a xenophobic association.
I have never had reason to have dealings with German lawyers and never witnessed a company dispense with a client in the same way as Hoffmann Partner did with me. I have never been dispensed with before and admit it came as something as a shock.
The reason I was dispensed with was because I made a complaint to them in that I was dissatisfied with the service they provided after it became clear they were only capable of doing “half” the job they led me to believe they were capable of doing.
Normally when you are dissatisfied with a service you register a complaint with the vendor. You do not expect the vendor to tell you “not write to their company” again.
A decent company would listen to reason (perhaps that’s why I made the association with the word arrogance).
If your experience is the same as mine when you vent your complaints to Hoffman Partner maybe you will get the same treatment, i.e. made to feel like an unworthy scumbag.
My engagement of Hoffmann-Partner, a German law firm practicing in Mainz, started with a telephone conversation with one of the firms Partners.
I was invited to attend an appointment in response to a complaint I was making about the company SWIPe and their clear “breach of contract” the result of which was proveable financial loss, stress and massive inconvenience.
On arrival, it was fairly obvious that I was not expected. The appointment appeared to have been forgotten and I was kept waiting around until Stephanie Scott (Partner) and Matthias Bender “Rechtsanwalt” (trainee lawyer, I guess that means) appeared. The appointment was actually to meet one (I believe to be) Volker H. Hoffmann. He was not there, I was told “had to go out” – some sort of emergency.
After a few days of email and phone discussions I was “handed off” to the junior lawyer, Matthias Bender.
It was around this time I was given complete assurance by Bender that I can expect ALL my legal fees to be reclaimed against SWIPe. That was very clear to me – made clear by Matthias Bender on the telephone and in person with Scott during my first visit. He even suggested it may be “possible” to involve the police if Schacht had been trading while insolvant (well, he couldn’t pay his bills, that’s insolvant in my book). This was one of the reasons I engaged full legal action and I also offered to pay in advance and made a number of financial deposits “on account”. Having given SWIPe all information and without withholding anything, I thought it would be sufficient for Matthias Bender to make statements that could be upheld. This of course began to fall apart when on 12/12/07 Bender sent me an email with an invisible caviat and after asking for 200 euros an hour to prove read all the emails which were mostly duplicate content from previous “reply-to’s”.
SWIPe’s “incapacity to pay” was not only a clear breach of contract but a “sign of the times”. I cited cases to the junior lawyer via email and the telephone of other companies in the same niche business folding as a result of one of the larger suppliers not paying invoices on time and that I feared that SWIPe would file for bancruptsy resulting in me not being paid. These companies include Agambs, Envoque, Cadco Evolution to name but a few.
It is the advice of one English law firm in cases that there is a chance of a company becoming insolvant then it was common practice to act immediately. I took the matter up with Matthias Bender who pointed out they would handle it their way (“diplomatic route”) and reminded me that signed power of attorney to them. I think they (and I) got lucky – SWIPe seemed to have pulled through their financial difficulty.
There were two overdue invoices and a continual track record of late payments by SWIPe which had to be followed up by bookkeepers each month at a cost to me that is formally recorded. The invoice which caused alarm was as a result of Mr. Christian Schacht, the Director of SWIPe, telling me he could not pay may invoice on account of the fact he had spent the money on a trade show and would pay it when his client paid him (whenever that would be). I was due to leave the country some weeks later and thought (for reasons known to me) that Schacht may end up “trying it on” by not paying me at all, perhaps thinking I wouldn’t go after him for the money. I wanted a lawyer in place at the first sign of trouble.
This invoice and time sheet was sent by electronic mail from the system of company that is by-law oblidged to keep records of all electronic communications. This was done 18 to 19 days before engaging a lawyer (the caviat). I felt sending a communication this way was sufficient “proof of sending” – if it came to the crunch, the pharmaceutical would have to produce the proof in court.
I expected Hoffmann Partner to know that email was legally admissable. I pointed out to Bender that any such modification to an email could be considered to be a perversion of justice (certainly in the UK it could lead to a custodial).
I advised him that Christian Schacht would know this and didn’t consider it possible for Christian Schact to do such an act (especially as Schacht works in the electronic records business) . However, they considered the risk of success in the court as too high. At this point, my impression was that Hoffmann-Partner were getting bored. Had I paid them the 200€ an hour to read the mails then then that would soon be lost when they told me to pack my bags. I guess I wasn’t earning them enough money (not that I had set a limit and had offered to pay more on account and come to Germany at short notice to attend the court hearing).
Details in the handling of my complained (namely, the transfer to Matthias Bender, the diplomacy granted to a potentially insolvant company, the fact that the company did not seem to have comment (“know much”?) about legally admissable evidence in terms of electronic communications) I told them I felt that I had been instrumental in the training of Matthias Bender and it had been at my expense (loss). I pointed out that I was not happy with the handling of this case for that reason. I advised them that I would be taking the matter up with whatever the equivalent of the “Law Society” is in Germany (still doing it).
This subsequently led to the instruction not to contact Matthias Bender that the money on account would be refunded to me and that the only communication I should have with the firm should be to provide my bank details.
So what is the lesson learned here? Maybe it’s not to do business with the Germans or perhaps maybe it’s better not to do business with law firms that substitute their experienced lawyers with trainees like Mr. Bender.
