Law Firm Made A Mistake, Any Way To Get A Refund?

Location: Florida

Hi, so I am helping my partner fight a legal battle in Florida. It is a first time offense, but the charges are serious and this case has the potential to be extremely life altering. We hired a local defense law firm that had good reviews. We paid a retainer fee of over $6000, which was stated to be non refundable on the legal agreement.

We had been speaking with our lawyer by phone and text over the past few months, and met with him once in person. He let us know that he would reach out to notify us of any upcoming court dates. Well, about a month later, we received notification that a court date was missed, causing a warrant to be issued.

After calling the law firm, we found out that the lawyer we had been dealing with had left the firm, we were not notified of his departure, and the letter to notify us of the court date had been sent to the wrong address. The law firm, to their credit, did immediately file a motion to retract the warrant, in which they admitted fault.

They basically said our case had slipped through the cracks and had not been transferred to another attorney after our previous one left the firm. They called it a “miscommunication” but this resulted in my partner having to miss work and almost losing his job, not to mention the risk of being arrested.

To add to that, when we did finally meet with our new attorney, his outlook and approach were not as aggressive as we need them to be.

Despite the retainer being listed as non refundable, is there any loophole for this since the law firm neglected to handle this case correctly? We are desperate to handle this as well as we can and really want to get the right lawyer on the case, and having that money back would be very helpful.