Michael Paul DiRaimondo

Worked with him in immigration through the IJ and BIA stages, and fired him after he let us down for the second time at the BIA. We were in a much worse position after working with Diraimondo. Not at all effective as an attorney, extremely overpriced, and dismissive and unprofessional. One am...ongst many such rude occurrences was when he called me to be aggressive and rude to me about how I was allegedly "being rude to his secretary," which was an absurd and false accusation he made because I wanted to pick up my documents from their offices. He didn't listen to our pleas to include several strong evidence-backed arguments, and later it became clear that those arguments were extremely important. Instead of admitting to his mistake he continued to make more mistakes and put our case into an even worse position. Worse than all of this, after we fired him, he went out to insult me, my father and my family before the very government prosecutors against whom we hired him to defend us, for sending him "nonsense illegible papers.... that he had no time to waste on" though he never said anything of the sort when we were actually working together. Again, turns out later, these "nonsense papers" he didn't want to read and lied to us about--while at the same time charging us $450/hour for 0.1hours, and 3.3hours and .7 hours and 1.6 hours, etc etc "for reviewing documents"--turned out to have all the arguments he failed to mention in his awful "brief." When I fired him, he started texting me and harassing me, trying to get me to pay him another ~$10,000 for work he didn't do. Also something that only occurred to me later after firing him is that I doubt he ever read most of the documents we sent him nor did he write any of the briefs. I believe he has a bunch of other younger attorneys at his little facade of a "law firm" to whom he contracts out his work that people paid for HIM to do. His bills also have several other lackeys listed as receiving the money we were paying him. Deceitful. I would not recommend working with Diraimondo as I believe he is an awful attorney who will put you in a worse position than you started, and it will cost you thousands upon thousands. I could write pages more and include more details. I only wish I could attach documents as I would gladly attach his "work" here as well as his text messages to me. Again, I could write pages more, but I am not going to bother wasting my time on this guy, and you shouldn't either.

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!

Please be aware of anything they tell you and promise in the initial interview because none of it will happen later on. They just want your deposit money so that they can later bill you 0.5 hour/$450 for reading an e-mail from you. They will have you thinking that because of their connections and par...tner's prior employments will help speed up your case. It is untruthful. Furthermore their paralegal and associate lawyer's are rude and ignorant. They have delayed our case 2 months because legal documents were drafted with BOTH parties names misspelled even thought they had our legal documents to double check to. Later when asked about any of their mistakes they become rude and defensive.

Absolutely unprofessional lawyer - already submitted my complaint to the NY bar. Showed up MISSING our documents when we arrived to court. Had no reason, nor apology - was simply "too busy and slipped his mind." Is that a joke? He also had forgotten my partners name. For the amount paid, that's ju...st salt on a slug. Further, he harassed myself and my partner via text message when we filed a complaint about him losing our documents prior to trial. A half-way decent human being would have apologized for the mistake and worked harder to remedy it. Not Michael. He seems to believe that owning your mistakes and praising them is the way to go. Avoid at all costs.