Hi there,
In today’s post I tell you how Fernando Valente, a lawyer I decided to give a chance turned out to be mediocre and even not being able to do the job, refused to return the 375 euros I had paid him.
In early February 2025, after months of dealing with delays from my current lawyer, I decided to look for an alternative.
My attorney, although incredibly professional and competent, had been facing personal difficulties that prevented her from dedicating herself to my cases as quickly as I needed.
In particular, there was a key document that was due to the Public Prosecutor’s Office in June 2024, and it was not until February 2025 that it was finally delivered. This was creating a lot of anxiety for me, as I had seven legal proceedings pending, and I could not afford to wait any longer.
Not wanting to get stuck, I decided to explore other options. I thought it would be prudent to have an alternate attorney to handle the cases in parallel, starting with a simple one, Diego’s dog attack, to evaluate whether this new attorney was capable of taking on the workload.
I made a request for lawyers on the Zaask platform and attorney Fernando Valente offered me his services.
From the first contact, I was surprised at how professional he was in responding to my email. Unlike other lawyers who did not even read what I wrote to them and simply quoted me for a consultation charging me 100 euros, Fernando answered me with clarity.
He explained how I should proceed with the complaint, offered me a quote and assured me that in 15 days I would have the action ready to be delivered to the court. This was a respite, as everything seemed to be falling into place, and I thought I could finally move forward with this case.
He asked me to pay him half of the estimate before I started, i.e. €375 out of a total of €750. This seemed strange to me, as I usually pay when the work is already ready to be delivered to the court, but, being a new lawyer, I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.
I figured that not all lawyers work like my usual lawyer, who has her own approach. So, I paid the 375 euros, trusting that he would be responsible.
What appeared to be a promising professional relationship quickly fell apart. After making the payment and receiving confirmation that he had opened the link and had access to all the documentation, I never heard from him again.
The agreed 15 days passed, and there was no communication whatsoever from him. He did not send me any progress or ask me for more information. He simply disappeared.
When March 5, 2025, arrived, I decided to contact him to ask if the document was ready, and to ask him to send it to me for review before it was delivered to the court.
He replied asking for time until Friday, March 7.
Despite not having anything to deliver to me, he sent me the receipt for the 204-euro court fee for us to pay. I replied that I was not going to pay any fee until the document was ready to be delivered.
Here I was beginning to have doubts.
On March 7, he sent me a document that would make any lawyer ashamed. My name was misspelled, and our address was incorrect. To top it off, he had drafted the action by copying what it said in the Public Prosecutor’s document about the criminal proceedings.
It did not make any reference to the rest of the documents that were in the link, which was quite serious.
For your better understanding, the document of the Public Prosecutor’s Office is the response we obtained from the criminal process of the dog attack. Said document has serious errors for which we made a claim.
In the link that was sent to the lawyer there is a Word document called 0Cronologia+notas in which besides having a detailed chronology of everything that happened, it lists the very serious mistakes committed by the Public Prosecutor’s Office in that criminal process.
Therefore, the document that the lawyer had prepared based only on the response of the Public Prosecutor’s Office was inadmissible.
That same day I sent him an email in which I put all the mistakes he had made.
In fact, ChatGPT had drafted the text better than him.
The following Saturday, Fernando Valente sent me the document supposedly corrected and ready to be submitted to the court, but again there were mistakes.
This time, the gentleman had made a vulgar copy of the Word document 0Cronologia+notas without even thinking or discriminating data or anything. This gentleman had no capacity neither to analyse the documents nor to contrast the data provided.
Besides, he only referred to one video, when we had sent him two videos as proof. This means that he had not even seen the videos, he had simply made a transcription of the Word document.
The most shocking thing is that the excuse for not having placed anything of what was in the document 0Cronologia+notas is that by chance he had not been able to open the Word document until March 7.
It should be noted that this document was sent by WhatsApp, it was sent as an attachment in an email, and it was placed in the link. In other words, it was sent through 3 different means.
He had confirmed on February 12 that he had access to all the documentation and if he really had not been able to open it, why did he not communicate with the client during the 15 days he had to do so?
The lie was more than obvious.
How could it be that a so-called lawyer would draft an action to be delivered to the court without even verifying all the evidence that had been provided to him?
On Monday, March 10, I emailed him again questioning his lack of professionalism and incompetence:
“Good morning Fernando,
First of all, we are totally perplexed by the fact that you were only able to open the Word 0ChronologyEvents+Notes until March 8.
I wonder how it is possible that, from February 12 until March 7, the date you sent the document supposedly ready to be delivered to the court, you did not have access to this document and did not bother to notify the client to send it to you again.
We also do not understand how you told me on February 12, via WhatsApp, that you had managed to open the files and then, on March 8, you tell me that you had not managed to open them until March 8.
This document, in addition to being in the link, was sent separately by email as an attachment. And it was also sent separately by WhatsApp.
We do not understand how you could not open the document, neither from the link, nor received as an email attachment, nor sent by WhatsApp.
In the folder 8Complaints is the complaint we made to the Prosecutor’s Office, which says a lot about what is reported in the Word document in question. Therefore, I believe that this document has not been read or reviewed either.
In addition, on February 16 a reply email was sent with Diego’s data for billing and my data as a witness, so we do not understand how my name and our address may have been misspelled.
In the new document you sent, none of the attached files, neither the photographs nor the videos are cited.
In paragraph 17 it says “as indicated in the video”. Which one? Because there are two videos.
And the first one is especially important to prove that the owner of the dogs was not there. Therefore, you have to detail the videos. When in the document it says that the owner of the dogs was not there, it should have referred to this video.
So we ask ourselves: have you seen the videos?
Even if the facts are proven thanks to the criminal process of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which makes this case very easy, it seems to me that the brief to be presented to the court must be professional and competent, logically collecting all the evidence provided by the victim.
Diego paid the first part of this claim on February 18 and today, March 10, 21 days later, we realize that the documents sent have not even been reviewed.
At this point, we wonder if you have the capacity to draft the claim and move it forward.
I look forward to your response.
Best regards.”
At this point, the incompetent Fernando Valente had not even had the dignity to apologize for not meeting the deadline, nor for making mistakes in such stupid things as a name and address and for being so incompetent as not to even review the documentation provided.
On March 11, he responds again without apology and with total arrogance saying, “let’s be practical”.
Without responding to any of the multiple incongruities and questioned failures, Mr. Fernando Valente limits himself to say that he is only going to place one of the videos as evidence because the other one does not seem relevant to him.
I answer the following:
“Good morning, Mr. Fernando,
I hope you are well.
First of all, on the deadline,
– the 15-day deadline you indicated was not met. It was you who gave that deadline.
– You made a mistake with my name,
– You got the address wrong,
– You only checked one document (a document from the prosecutor’s office),
– When your attention is drawn to the Word document with the chronology and important notes, you lie and say that you had not managed to open it until the day you were questioned about it (when on February 12 you confirmed via WhatsApp that you had managed to open all the files).
– Allegedly, you were unable to open a Word file sent by WhatsApp, sent as an attachment to an email and placed in a link. But you did not bother to inform the customers who had hired you to provide a service during the 15 days you had.
– In this new email, it appears that you consider the first video to be unimportant and decide, once again arbitrarily and without consulting your clients, to leave it out of the action.
And you only give an explanation when confronted with the fact.
If you consider professionally that this video is not important, you should have told the client during the first 15 days you had to prepare the action, obviously giving the relevant explanations.
And it is the client who ultimately decides whether the video is taken out or not.
– The worst thing is that, when asked about the numerous failures, the answer is “Let’s be practical”. This is very disrespectful to us.
The logical thing is that when we make a mistake, we apologize to the customer.
We are paying for a service (the first part paid for in advance), a service we have not received to date. And to top it off, your behaviour and education leave much to be desired.
For all of the above, in addition to the time we have lost, we have lost confidence in you, which makes it impossible to give you more time to see if you can correctly elaborate the document and correctly cite the evidence provided, and that the process moves forward once and for all.
For all these reasons, we formally request you to return the 375 euros that were paid in advance to the same account from which they were received
Kind regards”
The last response of the so-called lawyer this time was extensive. He did not apologize or explain his lies or mistakes but copied several articles from the order of attorneys to justify the theft of the 375 euros.
I replied that, for 25 years as a lawyer, his performance left much to be desired and that I expected the return of the 375 euros within 5 days.
As expected, he did not return the money.
That’s why he collected the money in advance, so he was sure to get paid even if he did a mediocre job.
As in March 2025 I was quite complicated as I had to defend myself against a complaint from another swindler and we were in the process of buying a house in Spain, I would later take care of denouncing this gentleman before the arbitration court and the order of attorneys.
The learning after this is that I had to wait for my lawyer no matter how long it took, as I was not going to find anyone as professional and honest as her.