Michael Paul DiRaimondo

My husband and I were referred to DiRaimondo & Masi, LLP from another lawyer because his political asylum case became very complicated as he was put into a final order of deportation a month or so before we got married. At first, we perceived Mr. DiRaimondo to be an excellent attorney. He worked on o...ur case for a little over a year before we realized what a horrific attorney he truly was. Not only was he extremely arrogant and rude, his entire staff was as well. He never answered our questions or listened to our concerns when we met with him for the $450 an hour. We would sit in his office and listen to him boast to us about the success of his other cases and try and make us feel that we were in good hands with him although we feel like nothing got accomplished with our case. Prior to filing for an I-601 extreme hardship waiver and an I-485 green card for my husband, he begged us to proceed with his political asylum case because if he won, "he would make law." He lied to us numerous times of where we were allowed to file our waiver case, apparently the law changed and allowed us to do it in our state (NJ) instead of New York which was more convenient for him. We ended up having to move into NY and commute to NJ to see family and go to work for an entire year. He also referred us to the worst expert witnesses in the field when we did our I-601 extreme hardship waiver/I-485 green card case. We got called in for an interview for our case and waited 4 hours to be called and we were told after waiting that we had to come back for a stokes interview. He flipped out on the officer and became irate that the officer made us wait 4 hours and would not interview us. Well, after we left and kept in mind how he treated the officer, we decided to seek advice from another attorney who happened to be too busy at the time to take our case initially. From this new attorney who happened to be in a small office in NJ, we learned that our case could have been done the entire time in NJ and we wasted our time and money moving into NY to make it more convenient for Mr. DiRaimondo. The next day, we fired Mr. DiRaimondo and asked for all of our documents back. Not only would he not let us pick them up in his Manhattan office, we had to drive over an hour to his office in Long Island to pick them up. We were suppose to have a $1400 credit on our account but he charged us $600 to make the copies of our case and put together the paperwork. So, if you want to waste your money on this arrogant, domineering prick, go ahead. You will get no where with your case. Don't let his fancy office in downtown Manhattan get to you. Thank god I attained a new lawyer to deal with my case and clean up the mess DiRaimondo made. My husband finally got his green card with the hard work and compassion from the new lawyer we had attained. I truly believe that if we had stayed with DiRaimondo, he would have been deported or arrested at our next interview. Don't waste your time or money!