Law Firm's Malpractice Causes Nightmare for Pre-law Students

Law Firm's Malpractice Causes Nightmare for Pre-law Students
Author: Lsat Fraud

Law Firm's Malpractice Causes Nightmare for Pre-Law Students

For several years LSAT students across the country have been defrauded by a Houston business passing itself off as our company. Students visiting the www.testmasters.com website—which is controlled by the Houston company—often mistake it for our website and pay over $1000 each to enroll in the LSAT courses advertised on the site. These students think they are signing up for the TestMasters LSAT Course but end up getting "the worst course on the market", to quote one of the confused consumers. When students discover that they have signed up for the wrong course and seek refunds, the Houston company either refuses to give the students their money back or requires that the students sign legal waivers and gag orders in exchange for refunds.

TestMasters has created thewebsitewww.duanemorriscommitsmalpractice.com to inform consumers about this scam and its underlying causes. The site reveals how one of the country’s largest law firms—Duane Morris—enabled the Houston business to cheat aspiring lawyers out of their time, their money, and in many cases, their futures.

For More information please visit www.duanemorriscommitsmalpractice.com

On May 22, 2007, Duane Morris attorney Felice Schonfeld telephoned the TestMasters office and spoke to one of our customer service representatives. Ms. Schonfeld was seeking to enroll two of her sons in the TestMasters LSAT course, but previously had been misdirected to the imposter company. She began the conversation by stating that she was "very confused." When Ms. Schonfeld learned that two different LSAT preparation companies with the same name were operating in the same geographic markets, she described the situation as "awful… I have never seen anything like this… This is terrible." She then went on to proclaim, "You’ve got confusion here… I’m a trademark attorney, for God’s sake. There’s nobody that’s going to be less confused than me, and I was confused. You’ve got the worst confusion situation, frankly, that I have ever seen in my thirty years of practicing." Ms. Schonfeld correctly observed that TestMasters is suffering great damage as a result of the confusion: "You’re losing, I am sure, a tremendous amount of income here."

"Get outta here—where’s your trademark attorney?" asked Ms. Schonfeld. That’s exactly what I was wondering when I found out about the Fifth Circuit’s decision. No one at Duane Morris informed me of the decision until six days after it was rendered, and by that point the deadline to file an emergency en banc appeal had drawn dangerously near. When I demanded to speak to Mr. Redano, I was told that he had gone to Alaska on a two-week fishing trip the day after he had learned of the Fifth Circuit’s decision. I tried repeatedly to contact Mr. Redano, but like a coward he refused to take my calls. As a result, we had no choice but to hire a different law firm at the last minute to file the emergency appeal. After collecting almost one million dollars in attorneys’ fees, Mr. Redano was suddenly nowhere to be found. Having lost our federal trademark and put our company’s future in jeopardy, he decided it was time to hang the Gone Fishin’ sign on his office door. Apparently we were no longer of any use to Mr. Redano.

This untenable situation—in which two different LSAT preparation companies are operating under the same name in 48 states—is precisely what trademark law is designed to prevent. Had Duane Morris provided TestMasters with competent legal representation, this situation would never have arisen. If our federal trademark had been upheld, the imposter company would have been legally precluded from using the TestMasters name outside of Texas. In addition, since we would have gained control of the www.testmasters.com domain name, the imposter company would not have been able to use that domain name to deceive consumers on the internet. Since the Fifth Circuit’s ruling in 2002, TestMasters has spent millions of dollars in attorneys’ fees in an attempt to remedy the situation, but to no avail. The federal courts have projected the Fifth Circuit’s ruling indefinitely into the future, taking the position that we can never establish trademark rights because we failed to do so back in 2001. As hard as we try, we can never seem to get out from under the wreckage that has resulted from Mr. Redano’s malpractice.