The Law Offices of Keen, Keen & Good – William T. Keen

From the little contact I’ve had with Kathleen Good, I’m not at all impressed. I’m the POA for an individual and needed some help gaining access to his finances. Ms. Good is his lawyer. I reached out via email and had no reply for 5 days, so I called. Her son called me back 2 days later (on a Friday) and let me know she was on vacation. (It would have helped if she had an “out of office” reply set up on her email.) He was very nice, but didn’t ask if he could help me or what the call was in reference to. He just said he’d have her call me back on Monday, which she did. And she was of no help. She went round and round about how other clients had the same issue and how she helped them by calling the specific financial institution I was dealing with. I told her I was still having issues, had a plan of action, but it would take some time to gain access to the funds – time we didn’t have as people needed to be paid asap. Her response was, “You just need to be patient. What do you want me to do?” I was perplexed because she had just told me she had helped numerous people with the same issue, having to call over to the financial institution, yet here she was basically blowing me off. By the end of the conversation I wasn’t left with a good feeling about her. I found her to be full of herself, somewhat rude and very condescending. I didn’t feel in control of the situation. She was calling the shots as to whether or not she’d help me.

Fast forward a couple of months and now I am the executor to this individual’s estate. I’ve decided not to use Ms. Good to settle the estate. Rather, I’m going to use my own lawyer. My lawyer called over to Ms. Good to ask for the original Will. I stopped by the other day to pick it up and got to meet Ms. Good in person. The brief encounter only solidified my decision not to use her. I again found her to be condescending as she commented several times that she was surprised I didn’t call her myself to notify her of “his” death and instead she heard from a lawyer. She basically was insulted. Not sure why. My lawyer had offered to call and I said ok; that was it. She went on about how she had a good relationship with the deceased and how she liked “him”, but I found it interesting how she didn’t refer to “him” by name once. Nor did she seem to remember our telephone conversation from a couple months ago when I had told her of his declining health. Had she been reaching out to check up on him? Ask him how he was doing? Stop by? No, no and no. And that’s ok. But don’t act above it all like you had a close relationship. At one point I wondered if she was even going to hand over the original Will…which she did. She was kind enough to tell me – I say sarcastically – that I was “allowed” to have it. My response, “I know I am.” (As in, “No duh.”)

Perhaps Ms. Good is great at doing her job. I’ll never know. But I could never work with her as her ego definitely gets in the way.