Jennifer Hooks Lawrence

My family & I hired Mrs J. Lawrence to represent us in the unlawful & negligent death of our beloved Mother; while under the care of Dr Bryce at Erlanger hospital in Chatt. Mom went in for a simple hernia repair; ended up with a perforated colon. She suffered & died within one week. Dr Bryce left Mom... [dying in ER] for over 13 hours; while he was in hospital. Mrs Lawrence told us our case sounded strong & she preferred to settle cases out of court. She acted interested at first. She strung us along for five & half years with an excuse every year as to why she had agreed to postpone our court dates. Finally we thought we were going to court to tell our Mother's side of what happened. Mrs. J. Lawrence called us to her office on a Sunday [before court on Monday] to tell us six adult children that we would not be allowed to speak of Mom's death & how she suffered. She thought it best to leave it up to the "experts" to speak. None of them saw our Mom dying, but we did. We had one expert & the defense had three or four. We were all upset. She was hateful & said she would not put up with my two brothers [now deceased] voicing their opinions. Yes we were country people looking for justice she had promised to help with. She was so easy on Dr Bryce & ask no incriminating questions. We were asked about our education levels, what we did for a living, what we missed about our Mom etc. Mrs Larwence was so unprepared & misstated information. Our whole law suit against Dr. Bryce was because of the documented facts concerning our precious Mother's unnecessary death; not her loving caring life. Mrs Lawrence spent more time at defense's table talking with fellow lawyers than she did with us. She proved nothing in court.. HER FEES--- Upfront she told my husband & me that we would have to pay her expenses which we agreed to; after she said we could do this for around $4000.00 --$5000.00 . Imagine my surprise when day before court on that Sunday she handed me a bill for over $30.000. I was shocked, upset & sad realizing then I could not trust her words. I still have that statement & other documents which I may post later. We ended up paying Mrs Lawrence $10.000 for losing the worst emotional experience of my life besides losing our Mother. Mrs. Lawrence's actions still hurt us as much as Dr. Bryce did. Sad how professionals treat others & get by with it. GB

I hired this lawyer due to her rating in Martin and Hubble and the fact that she won best of the best in divorce attorneys. I had only 2 weeks to hire someone and she met with me 2 days before my hearing. This is where things started going bad. Initially she appeared interested but ultimately did no...t correctly analyze the underlying cause. She used no character witnesses even when I requested them and gave several names to her following my ex wife's use of witnesses. She stated the judge was not interested in that. She did little or no discovery, had ineffective cross examination and let my ex wife's attorney 'run the show'. We were told by several sources that it was noted "her heart was not in this case". I talked with her several times about retaining other counsel but she told me we were doing ok and were where we were 'supposed to be' . I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt and she is truly a nice person but in the end I had to hire another attorney to salvage the terrible position I had been left in.