Monica Lafferty Harper

Monica Harper is an excellent attorney. My husband and I hired her on two separate occasions. She helped us with a modification of child support as well and defended against an erroneous Emergency Motion filed. Attorney Harper was extremely thorough and very prepared. When we went to court on the... child support action, she really advocated for us and was able to negotiate a lower child support than we anticipated. On the other occasion that we used her, she filed such a well-written and detailed response to the Emergency Motion, that the Emergency Motion was dropped entirely. We found Attorney Harper to be very precise and detail oriented. She took a lot of pride in her work with us, and both times we fared better than we thought we would. While results are never a guarantee, we felt that her preparedness and knowledge of the law are what set her apart from the other attorney on both occasions. She was a great choice for us and we would not hesitate in recommending her to others who have a family law issue.

I gave her a poor rating due to her lack of professionalism, her lack of compassion and her bitter attitude. She is not an attorney I would call easy to work with. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Divorce is hard enough on a person that to have to work with an attorney who doesn't seem tuned... in with what you're going through. My sense is that this attorney has been practicing for so long that she's lost touch with the human element of her chosen profession. I am a human being going through perhaps the worst moments of my life. I need someone who will represent my interests, who I will gladly pay to answer all my questions and who will work WITH me to get a solid game plan going. This was not my experience with this attorney. What I didn't pay good money for is to sit there and listen to a burnt out old attorney barking at me and trying to control every meeting. When you make an appointment to see your attorney, it's because you have certain things you need to discuss. You will find that with this attorney, your agenda gets steamrolled and you have to fight her for control over what is discussed. And God forbid, you interrupt her! On one of her tangents, I interrupted to ask a question. She actually had the galling nerve to bark at me and say "Hey! Do you want my help or not?" I sure as hell didn't fork out all this money to have to deal with this. If I wanted to be treated like that, I would have stayed married! I actually had to say to her, "Look, I'm paying you to represent MY interests. I'm not paying you to waste time on issues that I have no interest in discussing. I want to focus on this and not that." She goes on tangents, expanding on topics that are irrelevant to your agenda, I'm guessing she does this in order to drag out the time so she can slap another billable hour onto your invoice. Then she makes you think that your chances of getting what you want in court are slim (even though 3 other attorneys told me differently). Again, this is designed to make you think that it'll be a lot of work on her part to get you what you want and then separate you from your money. Bottom line: I have a hard time trusting an attorney who doesn't LISTEN to what a clients interests are. She clearly looked at me as a cash register. Period. She had zero compassion for what I was going through. Don't get me wrong, I want an attorney who can do the job and get me the outcome I'm looking for. But along the way, there has to be some decency and some level of compassion. I was unable to relate to this attorney and did not find her to be a good fit.