Reviews

I dealt with Steve when I sold my house in 2023 and found Kellem and Kellem to very professional, response, and helpful - as well as easy to deal with. I recommend them highly.

I would highly recommend using Steve for your real estate transactions. He was responsive, highly knowledgeable, and incredibly organized when we came in for our closing. He took the time to go through all legal documents with us to make sure we understood what we were signing.

Kellem & Kellem were great, our buyer’s closing was smooth and Steve Kellem made the mountains of paperwork easy to understand and significantly less daunting. Jill L., paralegal, handled all communication professionally and efficiently. Would highly recommend this firm for your real estate needs!

THE WORST ‘PUBLIC APPOINTED’ attorney I’ve ever met. Never called me back once, lied to the judge he sent a letter to me, even if he did what lawyer puts information in a letter. So now I’m defaulted. Will not being paying the court for this lawyer.

A few years back, any violation of my rights were not an acceptable scenario. Richard helped me out and did what needed to be done.

I did not work directly with Kellem and Kellem - they handled the buyer's end of a recent home sale of mine. This review is a direct result of that transaction. I'm sure they're super friendly and efficient with processing of paperwork for clients - the closing went off ahead of schedule, and without issues. What I can't get behind is their inability to wire seller's proceeds. I live out of state and granted POA to my attorney, Jim Hoye in Quincy, to handle the transaction on my behalf. I learned about a week before the closing that Kellem and Kellem was not able to process a wire transfer of the proceeds and would instead overnight a paper check, which they did. Since the closing occurred on a Friday, the check arrived 3 days later on Monday. Due to the amount, it's not possible to deposit via mobile or ATM due to bank restrictions, and required an in-person trip to a branch during business hours - an unnecessary waste of time. The check was drawn on Kellem and Kellem's IOLTA account at Boston Private Bank, (which was acquired by Silicon Valley Bank last year). Per my Chase banker, the funds from the proceeds will be held for a minimum of 7 business days since Chase's automated funds verification system and their manual funds verification team were unable to verify funds (likely due to complications caused by the BPFH/SVB merger). The funds verification hotline phone number assigned to Boston Private's routing number goes to a dead IVR phone system rather than routing to SVB. For risk management reasons, Chase's internal SOP doesn't allow them to contact SVB even though they're aware of the merger, they are only allowed to call the verification hotline assigned to the routing number on the check. Including the 3 days in shipping, the funds will take 12 days to be made available when a wire would have had them available within ~24 hours. I imagine that it felt good to do business with Boston Private, a "local" (yet, publicly traded) institution for business networking purposes, and likely a strong working relationship existed at one point, but those days are over. It's time to find a bank with national reach and local branch operations that are actually open. Boston Private/SVB Hingham has been closed "temporarily" for some time now and was fully removed from the SVB website in recent months, suggesting it won't be reopening) that will allow you to wire funds with ease. I would absolutely not recommend a law office that puts folks in this position - whether it's done strictly for convenience in saving Kellem and Kellem's time or because they simply are unaware of the broken processes at SVB that cause payment delays for their clients. Again, they did everything in a timely manner and the check was in the mail by EOD on the date of the closing, but their outdated process and banking partnership is leaving me with a 12 day waiting period to access the funds. The easy way to respond to this would be to point fingers at my bank and say something patronizing like "we held up our end of the bargain and sent the check the same day, your bank placed a hold on it, take the issue up with them", but the cause of the delay is a direct result of their business decision to use a banking partner that can't offer them a banking solution that meets their modern business need. There is a Chase branch effectively within walking distance of Kellem & Kellem's Hingham office that I have personally used for both Chase Private Client and Chase Business banking services. I would recommend you take a trip over there to see what they may be able to offer to transition you away from SVB.

Called. Left message. Ghosted. If this is how they treat new business, then why are they in business.

We actually met with an attorney not with their firm.