Fair Fee Collection

[pc0723]

What is the name of your state? TN

My husband is the executor for his father's estate. The estate is in disbute with family members and also about $80,000 dollars in debt. $60,000 of which my husband and I paid so as not to allow bank foreclosure, so we then became creditors to the estate. I suggested a partition of a piece of property to the estate lawyer, which he agreed was a very viable alternative to solving the selling of the propery for debts of the estate. But he said he could not handle it, because it would be a violation of ethics, as he was already in litigation to construe the will. But that he knew someone in the area. We spoke with the lawyer on the phone. He agreed to write the suit and show up in court for 700$. Which we paid up front. My husband and I met with him and he recieved the file from the estate lawyer.Explained what we wanted. 2 months later and 2 VERY deurrogatory phone calls later, We decided we no longer needed his services, and we sent a letter of seperation. 2 weeks later, we recieved a bill for an additional 731.00 dollars. And also two case file printouts from LexisNexis that a monkey could have printed out. They were not even in the subscription portion of the website. The "suit" he prepared did not even have the correct information in it. and in his itemized bill, he billed for pulling certain maps and documents from the courthouse. WHICH WERE IN THE ORIGINAL FILE !lol Also he had billed us for the phone call where my husbandwas attempting to see if we could get a check in kind of system. He also billed us for the conversation where my husband told him we would no longer require his services. From working with my other attorney, I understand that the VAST majority of work that an attorney does goes completely unseen by the client. And I wouldn't want to deny anyone thier proper fee. But this just seems like he is attempting to con me. If I want to fight this, what are my options. And what type of response should I send to the letter from the law office attepting to collect.