David H. Levy

After dropping my original attorney who was making no progress in getting my alimony payments reduced upon my retirement, Mr. Levy quickly got the job done, winning me 90% reduction in maintenance. He communicated with me well and pushed the case forward to make sure I got an appropriate reduction in... payments. Compared to my previous lawyer in this case, and my lawyer in the original divorce, Mr. Levy's performance was stellar.

David, and the entire group at Berger Schatz are absolutely excellent. I met with several lawyers prior to hiring David, and I am confident that I made the right decision. My divorce was unexpected, and David and his team guided me through the process, always giving me appropriate legal advice on h...ow to handle complicated situations, even if it wasn't always what I wanted to hear. He remained professional, even in the face of an opposing lawyer who was disrespectful to both me and my legal team. His advice and experience allowed me to maintain my integrity throughout the process and come to a settlement with which I am happy.

In 2014 I hired Mr. David Levy from Berger Schatz. Hiring Mr. David Levy turned out to be the ultimate nightmare in my divorce. Mr. David Levy is a founding partner of Berger Schatz and was the firm’s managing partner from 1997 until 2012 with 38 years of experience practicing in Illinois. According ...to him he has taught matrimonial law for IICLE and lectured for quite a few organizations. It looks like the perfect attorney to be on your side! One might think that working as a divorce lawyer you would have some empathy for your clients, it is certainly not the case with Mr. Levy. He clearly saw the devastating effect the divorce had on myself and continued what he was doing. I didn’t hire him for $500 - $565 an hour to benefit from his empathy. I turned out that he didn’t have integrity either. I didn’t specifically hire him for his integrity, but when someone tells you at the first meeting your divorce will cost $20,000 and it will take year to year and half, and then two years later, after I have paid Berger Schatz more than $120,000, presents a monthly bill of more than $30,000 (neither approved, nor necessary and most probably not even performed items) you know that anything he has said or recommended would have nothing to do with my goals in the divorce or my wellbeing. He certainly didn’t consult with me beforehand about the pros and cons of performing the items part of the bill (assuming they were really performed). But maybe he is the best lawyer and deserves his pay and maybe he achieves extraordinary results? Consider this – he lost on all counts by an extreme margin – instead of the goal of 50/50 time split with my daughter I have less than 10% (aside from splitting vacations), the finance side will probably go 60/40 in favor of my wife, where the goal (a realistic one) was in the other direction (note that the financials in my case are extremely simple – less than 10 lines in Excel spreadsheet) and almost 3 years later the divorce is still not finished. Or maybe the opposing lawyer was really good? The opposing attorney, probably has a quarter of David Levy’s experience and is one person firm. And I cannot tell what mixture of intentional deceit, negligence, incompetence or whatever other reason led to this result, but I know that Mr. Levy kept me in the dark for all those years regarding the probable outcome - otherwise I would have clearly fired him and he wouldn’t have taken that much money. Where I come from, when someone makes a mistake – they are responsible for it and at least try to fix it and somehow compensate for it. I didn’t see anything close to that in Mr. Levy’s actions. And I believe everything he did was intentional. His last two bills before he withdrew were totaling around $40,000 including many unapproved, unannounced and unnecessary items. Even though I offered him to pay the part that covers his time, he refused and went after me asking for the full amount. Again, this is the person who quoted $20,000 for the cost one year and a half timeframe and withdrew after two years and the divorce is still not done almost 3 years later. The money he took and is asking for is comparable if not more of what is at stake in the divorce. Would you hire someone with 38 years of experience who quotes 8 times less than what he would ask eventually and he would not do anything of value to you?