David Edelberg

In addition to giving me the benefit of his experience with and in the system, Mr. Edelberg was kind, compassionate, and an island of calm when I needed it most. His legal advice was impeccable, he answered all my questions in a timely manner, and his legal assistant is equally kind and efficient. It... was a great comfort, in a time of stress, to know that he had everything under control. I recommend him without reservation.

Having just finished our Chapter 7 Bankruptcy filing, I have a couple of issues with this attorney. The first is that even though he seems a competent enough bankruptcy attorney, he is not one who liked to communicate with his clients once the retainer was paid and the process put in motion, either ...through email or phone calls. He seemed to take the attitude that the client does not need to concern themselves with anything beside what he instructs them to do. Any personal specifics and values that we had as clients did not seem to be considered. It was important to us that we did everything possible not to lose our home, as we have an adult disabled daughter and after 19 years of paying a mortgage, we would like to have something to leave for her in her special needs trust upon our deaths. It was also important to us to try and rebuild our credit rating post-bankruptcy. This attorney's advice to stop paying all of our bills, including our first and second mortgages, in order to bank our money in preparation for our new debt-free life, post- bankruptcy, ran counter to what we believed would help us in modifying our mortgage after the bankruptcy discharge in order to save our home by securing a more affordable payment and interest rate during a time of job loss and financial stresses through a HAMP program. This did not seem to concern him. Secondly, the issue of our home being underwater and our second mortgage possibly being struck from our secured debts was not followed through on as he had discussed with us both, in person, at our initial consultation and again at the signing of the documents, and also at our meeting with him at the courthouse to appear before the trustee (where he arrived 2 hours AFTER he had instructed us to arrive) and discussed again during several emails regarding this issue which we sent to remind him and in which he requested we get an appraisal and/or market analysis (which we did) showing that our house was worth less than what we currently owe on it. He had told us that this step, if it turned out that the house WAS worth less than what we owed, WOULD cause us to have additional work performed by his firm at an additional cost, which we were okay with. He told us that an additional retainer agreement would have to be drawn up at that time. Our wish to reaffirm the auto loans we were paying right through the proceedings, in order that afterward, our on-time payments would help rebuild our credit rating was met with outright derision by this attorney. When we received our discharge in the mail, this attorney then stated that we had been "difficult to work with" when we voiced our disappointment by email that the 2nd mortgage issue had not been taken care of prior to our being granted our full Chapter 7 discharge and we needed to know how we would now have to proceed to have the issue resolved. He replied right away (first time) that we would have to open a new Chapter 13 bankruptcy, but he had made the decision not to work with us to resolve this issue, or any other issue, due to our being "difficult" and we were left to shop for another attorney to resolve this. I assume having a mind of your own, opinions and personal values, as well as a need to understand how the proceedings are going and desiring follow-through with the issues spoken of but not yet put into writing makes one difficult. Ultimately, we were granted full discharge of our Chapter 7 Bankruptcy , which I suppose I should be grateful for. But I am left feeling somewhat resentful. I would not recommend using this attorney if you are someone who has the attributes cited in the paragraph above. That would make you difficult.