bank guaruntee

andenca, i came into these forums looking for legal advice. aifos is holding my deposit and refuses to refund it. i have been reading with interest many threads in the hope of finding an attorney who is able to help me out. my choice so far includes the two firms who post on this thread. one of them has been badly accused of lack of independence - by you -, which i find hard to believe, accusation which follows the hazy comments made by the other law firm. it's not that i don't trust your judgment, it's just that i don't know you, and you might be the one, after all, who is in someone's payroll, excuse me! perhaps it’s just that there is some interest in bringing into discredit every other law firm who posts in these forums (the truth is that there are not many, i wonder why...) i have now re-read the thread from the beginning, and i'm starting to put two and two together...

if you have any evidence that supports the accusations you are throwing into this thread (lack of independence of a law firm which seems perfectly legit to me), let us all know. if not, i would be grateful if you could keep your cheeky comments to yourself, and let people do their homework! thank you.

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Unfortunately I am one of their clients.  Mr AF of Lawbird is one of the senior partners of Lawyers of Spain> When my problems first started, I copied him into my correspondence as I thought as the senior partner he would be in a position to action "something". Not a dicky word. Unfortunately, they do not put their actions where his words are, and I am not disputing that they have all the knowledge, just that they do not fully use it for their clients.

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Hello Maria,

Now that you ask about claryfing connections would be kind enough to clarify the following?

How are the Castro firm related to you, as you dont seem to appear in the photos nor literature?
Is Costa Luz firm independent from Castro? 
Are you in the same building, share facilities etc?
Who does Mar Durio work for? Does she really exist?

It seems to me that either you have 2 law firms, you work separately from your family (I presume they are) with the name CostaLuz or you have rented from them an office, but in any case but yet there are no photos of you in the website.

Please clarify

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Antonio
I don't really want to get involved in this childish game that seems to be being played, but I just clicked on the link to your company and you don't seem to be listed, or have a photograph on there!
Where is this going?

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Andenca, further to your posts in this thread:

 

23 Sep 2008 3:53 PM andenca Parcela I'm in London I've made 24 posts Send private message to andenca

Hi  Chris, I will tell you, as Maria is too professional. Marbella-Lawyers is a web site run by Lawbird. If you go into the Lawbird web-site, they will not list who are the lawyers working in the firm,   which I believe are the same ones that  form Lawyers of Spain, a firm which takes his clients through developpers and agents (hence the conflict of interest). I imagine that Maria's interest come because when relationship between developpers, agents and clients go pearshaped, these mentioned lawyers do not show interes on fighting their client's corner and THEN, this clients (if they have been lucky enough to get into EOS) will get help from Maria. I just wish that we could post in the forum some of the e-mails that have taken place between those lawyers and clients (myself to start with) as to warn other members. Spam post? If so please click here to report it

 

24 Sep 2008 8:13 AM andenca Parcela I'm in London I've made 24 posts Send private message to andenca

Unfortunately I am one of their clients.  Mr AF of Lawbird is one of the senior partners of Lawyers of Spain> When my problems first started, I copied him into my correspondence as I thought as the senior partner he would be in a position to action "something". Not a dicky word. Unfortunately, they do not put their actions where his words are, and I am not disputing that they have all the knowledge, just that they do not fully use it for their clients. Spam post? If so please click here to report it

We require you to formally withdraw and publicly apologise from the serious accusations on Lawbird Legal Services regarding:

1. Firstly and foremost that you are or have been a client of this company, Lawbird Legal Services.
2. The purported lack of legal independence of Lawbird Legal Services.
3. The purported conflict of interests of Lawbird Legal Services with developers and or Estate Agents. This is the second time you accuse us of this.
4. That the lawyers of the company “Lawyers of Spain” and those working at “Lawbird Legal Services” are all the same acting under the guise of different company names. 

All the above four points sustained by yourself are false.

We do not understand how someone who has had no contact whatsoever with Lawbird Legal Services can post such libellous remarks in a public site.

Failure to comply with our request will result in us taking legal action against you for libel. We have already had a Notary Public witness this thread and everything written in it until 11:45 am of this morning should anyone attempt to tamper or even eliminate what has been written in it.

You have until 14:00 (GMT + 2:00) of tomorrow 25th September 2008.

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Can I just clarify something here Lawbird?

I have re-read Adenca's posts and they clearly state that he/she is a client of Lawyers of Spain.
(By the way, I don't know Adenca personally, or anything about him/her)

So why should Lawbird threaten libel action against this member?

Unless of course Lawbird is an associate of Lawyers of Spain and shares the same Senior Partner.

Also, does your post contravene the Data Proection Act? 

I would think that publicly threatening a libel action against a person on a worldwide forum, would.

I am not a lawyer, have nothing to do with lawyers, I am just interested in how this thread is developing/deteriorating.

Did you read my thread on Integrity by the way?

I look forward to your reply,

Kind regards,

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I've been watching this thread with interest and I think Mr Flores is going slightly overboard.  Is A. Flores the same as Lawbird in terms of users?  They are the same companies, are you just different representatives using this forum?

Anyway, this is an easy one to resolve.  

We can see that Lawbird and marbella-lawyers are the same company, going by the links in the signatures.  If you look at the lawyersofspain website then Mr Flores apprears in the about us page.  So I assume these three websites (or are they companies) must be one and the same.

I'm not really sure what this proves but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that they are all linked.

But, there's no harm in having a few websites?  Is there?

Lawbird, I think you need to remove your threat from a public forum as it really looks bad on you guys.  PM andenca and if she really is a client of yours you should be able to sort it out yourselves.

This is getting petty now.  Can we just return to help the original poster please?

Justin, why don't you remove this thread and just start a new one?

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This has become too ugly.  Under the "freedom of expression" I wanted to pass my experience to other members. I  made very clear in my post that I was a client of Lawyers of Spain, at no point I individually accused Lawbird of not having legal independence or having conflict of interest (although I believe it is the case in a majority of legal firms, just read threads in the forum), as for sharing the same lawyers, I learnt about it from the forum, true is to say I do not know if all their lawyers are the same. But you only have to visit all the web sites and put 2 and 2 together.

I have never in any other thread attacked Lawbird individually, and if they polish their English, there is a YOU (individual) and another you(general, the profession), I believe I have always used the second one. Blaim is always in the ear of the listener, and no-one needs Me to discredit them, they do a pretty good job themselves. I honestly hope this is the end of doing dirty laundry in a public forum.

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Antonio, I don't think threatening forum members with legal action is really the way to go.

You have my email address, if you have issues with any content on the site then you can speak to me and we can remove it if it is incorrect.

Justin

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Hello Encarnacion,

It seems that you are not totally happy with our services perhaps because you are not getting the desired results when you expect them to happen. It does however seem from the thread of emails between Olga and you that you are satisfied with how the matter is being handled. You appear to have realised that even though we were recommended by a real estate agent they are now longer involved in the transaction and it is only the developer we have in front. 

You claim that you sent me an email and did not get a response, but I cannot find the email. You can send it if you wish via PM.

Finally, being recommended by someone is no crime, as far as I can tell, and in fact all lawyers in this website are regularly recommended by some agent, Maria included. Does this mean that we lack independence? Not at all, quite simply some real estate agents like to work with some lawyers, that´s all. 

As I say, if you want to email directly you can do so directly on my email, through Olga or via PM, and I will clarify in issues in respect of the process of execution of your bank guarantee.

As you may know, we have already sent notice of cancellation to the developer on behalf of all our clients (regardless of whether they wish to proceed), which has been responded by them denying our claim that a delay has taken place.

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Hi Justin,

I am not writing on behalf of Lawbird, just my own. There are 4 other lawyers working at Lawbird who have their own opinions and are afflicted by certain comments. So just to clarify that I dont write as Lawbird, even though I collaborate with them (and Lawbird is not me but 14 other workers, I am just used for TV appearances!). It´s a bit like CostadelaLuz lawyers and De Castro lawyers, two firms/one address, nothing wrong with that!

I will make a recommendation that whoever writes as Lawbird identifies himself (it´s a he! :)) 

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Don't lawyers have a vow of confidentiality towards their clients? doctors do, and can't breakd them even if the patient takes them to court!  I left Spain some 30 years ago, now I remember why!

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This message was last edited by A. Flores on 9/25/2008.

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Thank you, Antonio, for your comments. However, as a consequence of Mrs de Castro’s permanent attacks I believe we need to clarify further and  once for all who we are. We have explained ad nausea what is Lawbird Legal Services and what is the involvement of Mr Antonio Flores in this firm. Antonio is one of the partners at Lawbird as well being a partner in several other firms, including Lawyers of Spain of which he is the sole proprietor. Other than this, Lawbird holds no relation whatsoever with Lawyers of Spain. Anyone claiming the opposite is lying. 

Furthermore, the lawyers working for Lawbird Legal Services are different from those working in Lawyers of Spain. In fact, no lawyer of Lawbird has ever worked for Lawyers of Spain or vice versa. Unlike our most prominent accuser in this forum sowing continuously doubts on our professional integrity, we do not have direct links or referrals from real estate agencies recommending our legal services. We are not partners or associates to any Estate Agency either as anyone working within the real estate business will confirm. 

Barbarah, you claim you have read this thread with interest. We wonder if you have being paying due attention on doing so or else you wouldn’t be asking the same questions over and over again, unless of course you only wish to confuse people just like the resident “lawyer” is trying to do with the sole purpose of discrediting us and ousting us from EoS, acting just like she does in her patronizing style every time a new colleague attempts to join this community. It is clear that she wants no competition whatsoever.

I refer you to the post #4 of this thread:  

When Mr Flores writes we assume he does so under his own name and responsibility. Any of us, Lawbird’s solicitors, log in EOS anytime and would like to continue contributing replying to queries or posting articles on legal issues in a civil manner if it’s possible. Mr Flores has never logged in as "Lawbird", we do.  

As far as we know, it is not against the forum rules to post under the name of a company. We only post under the “Lawbird” username and have no other aliases for posting on EoS. We wonder if the same can be sustained of other forum members who seem to have multiple user names under which they post, mainly for self-praising it would seem, and can actually be caught red handed in this very thread. 

Regarding “marbella-lawyers.com”, we clarify it’s not a company, it’s only a website run by Lawbird which has been offering free advice to people for almost 10 years. It welcomes contributions from external lawyers and law firms. If you check the site you’ll see that the main contributor in the past has been Antonio Flores, although Lawbird as a firm and its lawyers individually are responsible for much of the content that has been added lately. Marbella-lawyers.com is currently being redesigned and will be the online home of many lawyers from all around Spain who will be contributing specialized articles and offering replies to legal queries on various legal topics. This site is the main source of clients for our company, and we would like to invite any other lawyers reading this thread to join the site and benefit from the independency that generating your own clients gives you. (Any of you interested please PM us.)

Many of our clients came to us after swapping over from their originally appointed conveyance lawyers to litigate as we are specialized foremost in litigation. They sought us; we were not their original conveyance lawyers. The veiled criticisms we have endured since joining EoS or the twisted questions that have been posted maliciously and addressed to us, at the expense of hijacking threads such as this one, by some forum members are done with an ill concealed hidden agenda. As we’ve hinted they have a strong vested financial interest in ousting us as they see us as a direct threat to their business. At times they have bent over backwards in doing so on legal issues which they had clearly misunderstood, whether on purpose or not, tweaking facts and concepts and not apologising for it as requested and as is due. 

Competition should always be welcomed in life as it brings in a gust of fresh air and allows us to improve the best within us. The ultimate beneficiary is the client. Monopolies, by their very own nature, are a closed shop with a stench of self-appointed righteousness at times, we add, which if challenged will often defend with tooth and nail. 

At no time have any of these foul remarks come from any clients of ours as we have pointed out repeatedly in various posts for the last month. We don’t claim to be perfect, far from it, we are human and make our fair share of mistakes as well and will naturally be held accountable for them. That we can accept. But we will at no time tolerate false accusations or sneaky manipulations based on misleading statements with the blatant aim of tarnishing our good and hard-earned professional reputation. We draw the line on such posts.

Andenca, although you are not strictly apologizing and are in fact cheeky enough to patronize us on our command of English, we will take your statement as a public withdrawal for your own sake and at Justin’s request. Freedom of Expression draws to an end when you purposely attack and trespass, in an unwarranted and unsubstantiated manner, the threshold of someone else’s rights whether it’s a physical individual or a company. If you have problems with Lawyers of Spain, we urge you to solve them directly with Lawyers of Spain as they are your appointed lawyers, not us, and have never been. So please don’t mix us and stick us in the same bag. We are a wholly different law firm as we’ve stressed over and over again. You have never had contact with us, ever, as you’ve acknowledged publicly above having only posted on us based on misleading forum hearsay without any factual evidence whatsoever to back your strong accusations. Hence, on you cornering us, we were forced to post you a warning against our own will. 

We think we have made our point clear and we hope in all honesty that this will be the last time we have to do so. In the future, Mrs de Castro (in your different aliases) please refrain to attack us (or even mention us) in your posts as, although you strive to play innocent and even go as far as portraying yourself as a victim (?), if needed be to meet your own ends, it is only too obvious what your true aim is. In Spanish we have a saying: “tirar la piedra y esconder la mano” which sums it up very nicely.

We are here to make a stand and be a permanent member of this community, and wish to contribute and benefit equally from the shared experience. We have much to give and a lot to learn from everyone who is willing to be friendly and respectful, keeping a civil manner in their posts in accordance to the forum’s very own rules, as we have done since we joined.

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Andenca,

I hope your matters can get resolved as early as possible and I am taking a very special interest in the matter, this is the ultimate aim of what has been said here and for which I receive so much grief!

Rgs 

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Thank you Antonio and Lawbird for your comments.  This forum is open to everyone as long as they abide by the forum rules.  We have no affiliation with any company that chooses to give information on this site and we certainly don't benefit finanically from any of them either.  This site is funded by advertising and that's it.

In fact we welcome anyone who is able to give free advice openly on the forum and allow the users to make up their own minds.

I would now ask that we end this thread here and we move on. 

If there is any future disagreement between companies over advice given PLEASE keep it professional and use the PM facility to resolve these.

Thanks

Justin

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Thanks Justin

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Please Justin, just let me say one thing regarding a an non-grounded statement by my colleague Antonio Flores, I hope he will not take it personally or as an attack as I just want to clarify :

Antonio Flores has said: "Finally, being recommended by someone is no crime, as far as I can tell, and in fact all lawyers in this website are regularly recommended by some agent, Maria included"

That is completely untrue.  I am not regularly recommended by any Estate Agent.

Our clients come out of just our contributions in EOS and the good work we do for them ( mouth to mouth). Everyone is welcome to do the same. We also love legitimate competition.


 

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