R. Michael Key

I had hired Michael Key for a custody case. After meeting with him, I was lacking in confidence that he understood what it was I wanted, and did not give me any reason to believe there would be a favorable outcome for me (which with the overwhelming amount of evidence I had that the case should go my... way, this was astounding). Still, I needed to respond to a motion of contempt, so I hired him. First off, his paralegal was generally at an average level of responsiveness. I had to seek out information pretty regularly and press to get it. Michael Key never was the one to respond to me, which at the time seemed like maybe par for the course with lawyers, but this still unsettled me a little. As I was facing a motion of contempt which I thought was in bad faith, I asked initially if I should give him all my evidence and start preparing a counter motion. He told me specifically that we would deal with that later, and it didn't need to be done now (which my lawyer now has told me was completely ridiculous, and it should have been the first thing we prepared). My overall experience was that I was lacking in information from Michael Key. He rarely, hardly ever really, initiated any contact with me. He seemed very disinterested in the outcome of the case. He charged $750 for simply filing the defenses to the plaintiffs claims that I almost verbatim wrote for him (not to mention all the times I was told I would be contacted at a certain time but had to be charged to call them seeking information I was told I would receive). In the end, on the day of court- representing myself- I had to look like a fool and total idiot since I thought the plaintiff had made an error in their visitation schedule when, in actuality, the opposing counsel had contacted Michael Key's office at least a month prior to the plaintiff's request for special visitation (which I had denied the plaintiff in correspondence as the plaintiff asked me for the visitation the day before the requested date), yet Michael's office never informed me of their request. Overall, from consultation to separation, Michael gave me the general impression that he was disinterested in my case. It seemed unimportant to him. He didn't seem to believe- by deigning it not relevant enough to look at- the evidence I had in support of myself (despite it being very unambiguous). His office rarely maintained contact with me in the times or time frames they told me they would. And, as I've learned from my current lawyer, it seems the things he told us were unimportant were actually very important. Thus, I gave him a low trust rating for being so disinterested in my case. I rated their responsiveness poor for hardly ever responding to me in a reasonable time frame. I rate his knowledge as fair for leading us astray in our case when we should have focused our efforts elsewhere. Lastly, a poor rating for keeping me informed as not only was the office hardly responsive, but when it became important to pass on information to us from the plaintiff, there was a complete failure to do so, resulting in a loss of an important visitation to the plaintiff (leaving me appearing unwilling to cooperate) and made me look like a fool when I had no idea that the opposing counsel had even requested this from Michael's office much in advance.