Unfortunately I cannot recommend the Stopa office for anyone long distant to his Tampa office. I repeat the qualification of for 'anyone long distance to his Tampa office,' as I am sure if I had the ability to go in person, it would have been different than what I ran into.
For one, and this one s...urprised me as I had read glowing reviews from a handful, I never had one of my phone calls returned. The only calls I got from them, less than fingers on one hand, were to give me bad news, either I had to pay an unexpected amount more than the contract said, or to be told 5 days before a 'routine' meeting on my case I had verified twice was nothing to worry when I had called their office on my own to be sure, was now determined bad and the only choice was for me to agree to a judgment, no deficiency waiver promised. Only 2 weeks before that their staff had told me not to worry as discovery was not even done; suddenly now, forget about it, no defense possible, as the judges in my county are bad and are just deciding judgments at those meetings.
So, here the great Mark Stopa office was telling me they were not even going to try, they were giving up before going in and telling me all I could do was agree to a judgment, without even the promise of getting a deficiency waiver. Their solution on that? Told me to hire a bankruptcy attorney to take care of that. Yeah, lots of care and feelings, not.
Huge disappointment as I paid the same $$ as anyone else and got abandoned. I feel if I was local it would have been different. But being on the other side of the state, I found it as if I had signed up as a free-loader and any thing doing with my case was like I was out of place and a beggar taxing their valuable time, rather than a paid-in-full client.
I have to add that since my budget was limited, I could not afford the add on services of trial, appeals, and so it seems if you can only pay for the straight defense, you will get minimum defense. While I was okay with that, I was not okay when his office told me everything was fine when I was specifically calling on a motion that seemed like it could be trouble, but when it appears they got to the point of actually looking at the motion I was talking about, 5 days before the meeting, they had a change of mind, and refused to even try to test if any defense would work, by refuse, I mean the paralegal staff though I don't know if they were repeating Stopa's words on that to me or their own views.
I mean, really, giving up before you go in is what I expect from a bad firm, not from this one. Can't say I blame Stopa himself, but maybe his staff, as I got the treatment they certainly would not have given themself. If they had gone in trying to see if they could overcome this meeting, and had failed, I would have felt they had tried all they could. But to refuse to try, and give the excuse why because the judges are not cooperating? Excuse me? Why should I roll over and die before I have been shot down? I thought this kind of tenacity was what made the Stopa firm different, but I found in my case that some of that advertised 'difference' is just that: all hype and not true across the board for all.
Could be if you can meet them in person and develop a rapport with key persons in the staff, you can expect good defense. But if you can't, you stand the chance of being treated rudely and like you are a bother, and a welfare case, even if you pay the same amount of money. There is a term for that: 'partiality'.
I wish greatly my story was different, that I had glowing praise for how tenacious Stopa fought for my case, but instead the ending was lame, shameful. It gave me the impression they were working for the judge, instead of me, working for the system to speed through older foreclosures, instead of for the homeowner. Thus for certain I can not recommend to someone in my county his firm. However, I honestly believe if you are in his county you will get great service.