I was poorly represented by this firm in 2018. I was referred to a specific attorney working at King Laird who came highly recommended by another attorney. I met with this attorney and liked his takeaways on how to approach this case so I gave a $3500 deposit. This attorney said it would be a simple case and would cost no more than $5500. After three months went by, I never heard from this attorney or the firm. After placing the call, one of the owners called back and said the attorney we met with was fired?? I expressed my reluctancy to move forward with this firm but he assured me that we had a good case. I trusted his word and gave this firm a second chance. After 5 months, this firm failed to file an emergency order, like the attorney said he would after speaking the second time. Time was lost again! An order was finally put in place on the other party 5 months after the deposit. After six additional months into the order, the other party failed to abide by the weekly terms of the order and our attorney never addressed this failure by filing a motion during this process to enforce compliance of this order. In fact, the attorney said, “we need to show a pattern of this failure to the judge to win our case.” I kept giving this firm a “second chance” for his negligence because I thought it was too late to change firms. This attorney kept changing his approach during the process, and would forget conversations I had with him and assigned another attorney to the case because he was too busy with other cases. He disregarded all the evidence I gave him to present against the defendant and said it wasn’t relevant? My “gut” was telling me he was not invested in our case and that other conversations were being held without our knowledge with the judge and the defendants attorney, because our attorney kept changing his approach and our case became less important. Two days before the hearing, the attorney sent over 135 questions to answer on paper and submit back to him. He was supposed to call and “PREP” us as witnesses and didn’t!! He NEVER called and allowed us to get on the stand UNPREPARED. We were attacked by the judge and the defendants attorney. Our credibility was twisted and criticized. It was clear this hearing was one sided as the defendant worked for the county and her boyfriend was a police officer that the judge said he recognized. The judge didn't care to hear about how for 6 months the defendants didn’t adhere to the order properly with phone calls or FaceTime. We were never able to speak with the children for 6 months and our attorney did nothing! The mother didn’t comply as she was the responsible party for the children. He had no closing statement to support our case when he said he would give a closing statement. We were threatened by the judge not to appeal, when it is our right under the law to appeal, and our attorney said nothing! Our judicial system and this firm failed my family and my grandchildren. It was very clear to me that the decision to give grandparents rights was pre-decided before we had a hearing. The final outcome of the hearing was a complete disgrace and the judge ordered no grandparents rights and no contact with the children until they are 18 years old, including the entire family. Our family still doesn’t know what the order means for the entire family because the attorney never had the professional courtesy to call us back to explain what the court order meant, when he said he would order a copy of the court order. I tried calling him and sent a letter and I never heard back from this firm. This firm billed us monthly giving unclear or no descriptions for the charges on the invoices. They received approximately $17,000 in legal fees in one year. We had to dispute unknown charges multiple times. This firm did not represent us in good faith, they made it worse for our family, but served their business model. I should have followed my instinct the first time when NO ACTION was taken. My family has not seen my grandchildren since January 2016 and regret hiring this firm.
Grand Parents
over 2 years ago