David John Betras

If you like to be lied to and treated like garbage then this is a good place to throw money to; terrible personal injury FIRM! Four long miserable years of their negligence! Attorney Betras “promised” on more than one occasion to personally handle my claim. Attorney Betras did not handle my cla...im, as he stated to me. He never called me back with corrected or updated info… always “let me check and get back with you”; but NEVER did. Attorney Betras did not come to mediation. Attorney Murkota arrived late to mediation. Attorney Murkota tried to threaten me that he could legally keep 40% of my net; pressuring at the time of mediation. Attorney Murkota was not part of this firm when I signed with them June 2018. No one contacted me prior to mediation to go over the procedure or what to expect. I was lied to the entire 4 year period and suffered economical hardship during the entire time. Lack of representation and professionalism! If your case is not worth millions, then you get treated accordingly!

David was my criminal lawyer for 4+ years. Initially, he was able to negotiate a plea agreement for me, but his negotiating style was to simply give into the US Attorney in most cases. I basically had no choice to accept, and David used scare tactics to get me to agree. When in court, David fumbled o...ver his papers and questions to witnesses. The DA was more prepared than my own lawyer. Then David basically abandoned me when I was on probation, and it took weeks at times to get him to return my phone calls. I kept David as my lawyer, as there was little to do in my case -- when he did have to submit motions, it was a difficult experience. He wouldn't listen on the phone. He put a junior lawyer who hadn't passed the Bar yet on the case, who I learned he paid $11/hour (and charged me $75/hour for his services). Frankly, this junior lawyer was better than David who would make many mistakes on the motions -- some of which I'd catch, and others were submitted to the courts with mistakes on dates and details. I found myself complaining about David to this junior lawyer, who agreed with my concerns, and told me that David also yelled at him all the time. One time, David met me for a meeting at a restaurant, and literally played trivia games on his phone (asking me to help with the questions). Then he announced that he had to leave after we'd spoken about my case for less than 15 minutes. Basically, David always has to be right about everything. He will argue with you, scream at you, be condescending, be passive-aggressive, etc. For all the years as my lawyer, David never once gave me a detailed hourly statement, which I requested many times. He would just negotiate for every dollar and not do the work until he was paid in advance, and when you need things to be done on a criminal case, you're in no position to negotiate. While I was in jail, I had to give David power of attorney and use my credit card. He paid himself, and then didn't pay the credit card bill costing me over $1,500 in interest and penalties, which I did't discover until I got out of jail. Several times I asked David to help intervene with my probation officer -- his tactic was to tell me to do everything they said, or "they will put you back in jail!". I was very scared, and didn't know what to do. In the end, David abandoned me when I had a probation violation. He refused to take my calls from jail, or calls from my friends/family until I paid him another $25,000 on top of the $200,000+ I'd already paid him. David wouldn't even recommend another lawyer. It became all about the money, and he dropped me as a client in my time of great need. I had no choice but to hire another lawyer at considerable cost just to get up to speed on my case. David refused to help this new lawyer, and literally wouldn't give him any of my case materials from the years he'd been my lawyer, which made it very difficult for the new lawyer to represent me.