James J. McDonald

I hired Jim McDonald to purchase a house in Montclair. During the process, Jim and his assistant hardly ever returned phone calls and emails and were difficult to reach. But most importantly, I would never hire Jim because his firm's email system was compromised by a hacker during my wife's and I ...house purchase. Long story short, but we were a victim of wire fraud from someone posing as Jim's assistant. Jim did not help us recover our down payment, denied any fault, and even blamed us. Luckily, we worked with the FBI, Secret Service and the NY General Attorney's office to recover most of the funds. I would definitely not trust working with Jim because of their compromised email systems. There are many real estate law firms that do the same work. It's not worth the risk to work with Jim's firm with your precious life savings.

Jim McDonald was assigned to handle the closing of my first home. I can't image having had a worse experience. His knowledge of my file was incomplete and on the day of closing I had to remind him of several key parts of the agreement he had forgotten. Furthermore, when I asked for additional advi...se on a matter related to the closing, he was not difficult to reach but the conversations melted down to a frustrating series of messages culminating in a heated, rude and unprofessional exchange. I successfully handled the matter without his advise an excessive and fruitless fees. I went with his firm based on my real estate agent's "advice" which basically consisted of a quick look at a list and finding out he was one of the few available attorneys, at the time. I can only image that much of the business he retains is due to unknowing customers, like me, being shuffled toward the next available vendor. I would NOT RECOMMEND this man for any legal transaction. Please do yourself a favor and research your closing attorney. Generally, they are there to point to the bottom of a page for your signature but if you have a legitimate question, they better be able to provide reasonable advise for the fees they take for granted.