I have had a recent incident and am looking for either legal advice here or where to seek the advice. I worked for a person who became a good friend during a 2 year period, 2 hours a week, maintaining very general excel files for financials and other office work. The business grew exponentially, and they opened a clinic. I continued doing their books, now utilizing Quickbooks. They asked for advice for things to provide (software, etc.) and whenever I gave my "opinion" I made it clear that the choice was ultimately theirs. There was a lot, in hindsight, that I now see I should've done much differently, but, because we were "such good friends" I opted to let some things slip, assuming we would address them at a later date, once the business was up and running and they were not consumed with construction and getting things off the ground. In the meantime, the paperwork they provided increased greatly, and was extremely disorganized. I built their QB data as best I could in the time frame that they wanted to pay me for. When their initial start up work was completed and they began to have down time, they were asking for numbers I was not able to provide, as the data was still being entered, corrected due to multiple invoices provided, incorrect information passed on to me, etc. Having done this process before, I again, assumed, we would meet when they had more time and iron out questions I had and how they specifically wanted to utilized the vast capabilities of QB. (they had vendors, customers, items, inventory, etc...all new from previous years simply keeping track of expenses. The long and short is they were upset that I was needing to spend more than 2 hours a week to organize and enter their info, did not want to pay me, asked me to not come to them with "every little thing" and I realized that this was not a good match for either of us. I then had personal issues come up with my elderly mom, and passed the job, with their agreement, on to another employee with QB knowledge. However, 2 days later, one of the owners decided he wanted to do the job. He had no QB experience of knowledge. We were not able to coordinate schedules, and he began to call me and send emails blasting me for things not being completed yet.

I was never able to specifically inform him of what needed to be completed, the hows and why's, but I am wanting to contact a lawyer to see what my liability is, as I feel they will probably seek legal action where they have now had to get their accountant's office involved to help clean up the data. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.