Catharine V. Blake

I will forever be grateful to Catharine Blake. She helped me navigate the most painful time of my life: a three-year-long high-conflict divorce. My case ended up settling. Cate is extraordinarily professional, level-headed, practical, direct in her communication, ethical, and extremely knowledgeable ...about the law. She is also very kind, and I always felt that she cared about me and my two young children. I never questioned Cate’s judgment or the soundness of her reasoning—and I have a standard for comparison because I worked with two family law attorneys (Cate was the second). It’s clear to me that Cate has the highest and most admirable motivation to do this work: to serve people well at an extremely complex and difficult time in their lives, and to advocate for children in the process. I recommend Cate highly and warmly.

If you google the firm Atwood and Cherny you would see an experienced firm with attorneys who represented some high profile cases. One of the cases being the Richard Sharpe case in which the firm represented a Mrs. Karen Sharpe. When we went to the firm for our "consultation" we expected it to be hop...eless considering the divorce predicament we had fallen into. Cate was the attorney assigned to our case and through the entire proceedings has been professional, reasonable and encouraging to avoid court rather then go to court. Her knowledge of the court system and her experience with the probate courts made the modification process extremely easy. She not only handled the paper work but her unbiased perspective helped ease tensions from the very unprofessional opposing counsel at the Law Offices of Nicastro in Roslindale. As the opposing counsel purposely avoided Cate in order to up their own clients fees and fired up their client rather than diffuse their clients anger Catharine stayed poised and professional with every contact. One of the most challenging things about being an attorney must be having to deal with opposing counsel and Cate did it in a way that other attorneys would admire. When the bill came it was always a shock, but for the positive. I expected with the amount of emailing, contacting and back and forths from the opposing counsel that the bill would be much higher. Cate and her firm were fair in their minutes and hours. The opposing counsel would send 4 page letters which Im sure would cost the other side hundreds and yet, Cate would merely reply with 1-2 page letters that ignored the he/said she said and stuck to the points at hand. At one point we emailed Cate a long lengthy letter and rather then draft something imeediately that she knew would anger the opposing counsel she asked us to think about our actions and understand the consequences. Once we thought about things we changed a few decisions which resulted in larger gains. We first went to Cate because our previous attorney was a complete fraud and had cost us thousands in damages. Cate, not only made sure the damage didnt get worse but she remedied some of the most important issues we had with the opposing counsel. Because of Cate and Atwood and Cherny's counsel we ended a 6 month battle that would have resulted in thousands of attorney fees and endless court battles. We cannot thank the firm and Cate enough for their patience and courage. I am amazed that this firm was exactly as they had advertised. They are by far an amazing firm and although I cannot post what my final bill was I can definitely tell you, it was nothing compared to what we thought it would be.