David Pratt

It never occurred to me that hiring David Pratt would need us to hire a separate firm just to keep an eye on him. Basically we unknowingly signed documents giving him complete power and then he used these docs to deplete with relentless high-fee billing. He charged nearly half of our after-tax assets.... He held our funds and property for many years, never explaining why, until I learned too late that he had been waiting for all the statutes of limitations to run out. There is a case against him by another family in federal court, the 11th Circuit, Miami Dade, Florida which describes really closely what we went through. Pratt was formerly with Proskauer Rose. Then he left and joined McDermott Will & Schute along with a half dozen lawyers that he persuaded to leave with him. Thanks AVVO for your service to Justice.

I hired David Pratt and his firm, Proskauer, for asset protection strategies for my portfolio. I was deeply disappointed in his work. Time has passed and I have become more forgiving because money is not everything but I don't want anyone else to fall into this trap. In asset protection I was trying ...to protect what I had already earned. It's a different kind of law, not necessarily involving litigation or defense. I simply wanted to keep what I owned and to pass it to my family when deceased. Pratt made unnecessary mistakes that exposed me to unexpected tax burdens. He created opaque entities and then removed me, the owner, and put himself in authority over those entities, which gave me great anxiety. and distracted his focus. He became difficult to communicate with, hard to get in touch with, and adversarial when I did get in touch with him. I paid all his bills, which were heavy and added an even greater diminishment to my portfolio.