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Harold Palmer Smith III
The Latham Square Building, Oakland, CA
Practices
4.0
Avvo rating
4 Reviews
Data reflects the status as of the latest update. Updates are typically done monthly.
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Overall rating
4.0
4 reviews
4.0
Anonymous
11 Oct, 2013
Peter Smith and his firm, Dhillon Smith, are corporate counsel for the company I serve as CEO.Peter represented the company in numerous actions, including our counter-suits, involving a former employee. The nature of the actions involved fraud, concealment and failure to disclose material facts to prospective investors, breach of fiduciary duties, self-dealing, etc. The former employee's attorney took on his case on contingency fees, and attempted to shakedown and bully the company and its executives at depositions and in court.
Peter's handling of the actions could not have been more effective and successful. He was calm, competent, low-key and very effective where it matters. While the other attorney was into theatrics and intimidation/bullying. Peter's style was focused, nuanced, and demonstrative of sound legal judgment and high quality professionalism. Peter created a simple, effective legal framework for the company to present his case for the company, presented it to the judge in a trial lasting several days. The result speaks for itself: the judge overwhelmingly ruled in favor of Peter and the company.
To make it more satisfying, the judge on separate occasions admonished the other attorney for conduct. In contrast, the judge was very satisfied with Peters conduct and professionalism.
At all times in this multi-year, multi-action process Peter kept the Board and CEO fully informed of what he is doing. He discussed his legal strategy, asked for feedback, incorporated those elements that we offered he found of value, explained why some of my other points didn’t matter, etc. In other words, his working style enabled the company and its executives to feel part of a team in working with the outside counsel in a very important matter.
Peter, considering the company's interests, had also filed court papers to insure the other party would be held liable for the attorney's fees in the frivolous actions they imposed on the company. The company is waiting for the judge to complete their ruling and expects to recover its costs (plus damages).
I've worked with some of the best attorneys in corporate law/litigation in the bay area. I'd rate Peter Smith and Harmeet Dhillon among the top. Their firm is small, the service is personalized, your case would be handled by the name partners, their cost structure is far lower than a big law firm so you get excellent value for your money.
If you are a CEO/head of a small or medium business I'd suggest you consider Peter Smith as corporate counsel. If you are an executive or founder of a company and need a sound, competent, low-key attorney to protect your interests, I'd suggest you consider Peter Smith. Lastly, if you are faced with someone attempting to intimidate/bully you with legal threats you'd do well to consider Peter Smith to represent you.
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Shri
24 Sep, 2013
Peter (as he prefers to be called) is a great trail attorney. He is a partner of his small but extremely effective firm Dhillon and Smith LLP. He along with his partner Harmeet Dhillon have, I think, put together a great team to help people like me to navigate complicated legal trials and processes emerging from some knotty business partnership disputes.
Peter has a great temperament to deal with the highs and lows of the emotions that I went through with my business issues and calmly helped me to make decisions by explaining the legal and trail nuances leading to successful solutions each step of the way.
In conversations with Peter I felt the dept of his experience and that was very reassuring to me. I am not an attorney or an expert in the Law by far and this is just from my experience as a layman client.
His firm, Dhillon & Smith LLP, have rates that are slightly on the higher side but they are very efficient with their hours. They are client friendly and work through any issues that may come up.
Thanks Peter and Harmeet ... and team.
I highly recommend them.
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Bob
18 Sep, 2013
We hired Harold Smith to represent the company as general counsel. As founder, CEO,and largest shareholder I had a ring-side seat in observing Harold's performance as counsel for about four-five years. Harold is expensive and ok value in select areas: real estate transactions and contracts and litigation, dealing with the city and state departments involving commercial and residential real estate. He was not as effective in other areas, specifically litigation involving business or commercial entities, employee-employer risk management, negotiating and settling with attorneys representing irate customers or business partners or employees, smoothing through upset shareholders, etc. Harold's inexperience, and his refusal to acknowledge it, complicated matters very much and proved in time to be expensive for my company. The company concluded we needed someone that was more experienced in those areas Harold was not strong, we needed less of real-estate focused legal help where he is ok. So we switched to another firm. Harold's handling of our decision to switch legal representation made things very difficult and he could have been more professional.
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