Azelie Ziegler Shelby

We hired mrs. Shelby and her Lawfirm to assist in my husband removal proceedings and to adjust status. At first everything seemed to be OK. We were told that they could possibly have my husband taken out of removal proceedings. We signed a contract for a flat fee not including mailing cost and supp...lies used during case. Of course that is normal with most attorneys. We signed our contract with her assistant. Three months passed after we signed the contract. We hadn't received any calls or updates. During this time I made calls to her office they would take my name and number down and continue to say they would call me back. When an assistant finally called me back I was informed the legal assistant handling our case left her Lawfirm. No one had told us anything all this time had passed and we believed that my husbands case was being worked on. When in fact the new assistant didn't know anything about our case and it seemed Shelby herself had forgotten about my husband cause. We were called into the office to review everything. We were then asked to sign documents so they could catch up with his case. We were with her for a little over two years. During this time she had gone through three translators. Each time someone left we were not contacted and there was mass confusion time lost and many mistakes made. Deadlines not met. We would call her office to speak with her and the assistant would always take our number and say she would call us back. Two weeks would pass before we would get a call back. We tried to be understanding knowing they have other clients. During this time we contacted her to ask if we could continue the process due to complications. She explained she would give us some time to handle the complications and to contact her to continue with the process. In a week we had contacted her to explain we handled the complications. She did not contact us back. Two and a half weeks went by and she contacted us back. She said she would still continue the process. During this time all documents that were asked for were provided. We paid her a large amount of money to keep up with the visa center website among other things. During this time notes were added to the website. Documents that weren't submitted correctly were rejected and each time I had to inform her office. I would call to speak with her and the assistant would do the same again. Many days would pass before I would get a call. Documents would have to be resubmitted again. Documents that should have been submitted the first time weren't. Each time new documents are submitted to the National visa center website that starts the 30 day clock all over again for them to be viewed. Applications that were supposed to be mailed months ago; were said to have been mailed. When they weren't. In the end my husband was sent back to his country. we were blamed for the mistakes made in the case. She claimed because we changed our minds about travel arrangements. Which had nothing to do with employees leaving her Lawfirm. Had nothing to do with documents not being submitted at all or incorrectly. Our travel arrangements had nothing to do with applications not being mailed either. She then returned money due to applications not being mailed. She withdrew from the case and still claimed after we paid the entire flat fee; that we still owe her more money for work she did. She was already paid for her work and didn't complete the work. Many errors were made. She made many false Accusations towards my name. left out many calls made to her office by me and my husband in an outline given to us with our documents. with falsely typed notes making more false Accusations. She continued to blame us for mistakes made in the case instead of taking responsibility for her wrongs. I believe if she would have kept up with my husbands case he would have been able to finish his paperwork here in the U.S. Her inability to keep up with the case load made neg. impacts on my husband's cas

We hired Azelie Shelby to represent us with the trademark office - the other party had filed for an extension of time to oppose but, in the meantime, wanted to work with us on an amicable settlement which involved amending our original trademark application, which we were open to and saw no problem w...ith - She had three whole months before the extension expired to work something out with the other party so the opposition hearing could be averted. But, instead, three months passed by without any communication with us from her firm or her (even though she had both our email address and phone number on file and was explicitly asked to reach out to us and keep us informed and updated anytime) - The result was that we ended up receiving a formal Notice of Opposition from USPTO at the end of the three month period and were forced to call her office ourselves to find out what went wrong. She chose to blame the other party, proceeded to charge us for every single interaction that happened during this time (even follow up emails from us asking about the status of our case) and also asked us to put another huge retainer down to defend and protect our trademark, despite the fact that she failed to do the job she was hired for in the first place. Being a small, family-owned startup business, we simply could not afford another retainer so, in good faith, we just paid her the balances due and decided not to engage her services again - For the record, we had also consulted other lawyers informally, as a backup, during that time and they all agreed that we had a good and sound case but because we had already hired Azelei Shelby we just waited and trusted that she would act in our best interest. There was no reason not to. Unfortunately, that did not happen. We lost a very good and fairly strong case and had to abandon our trademark because she took too long to make a proper move and we were left with no time to hire another attorney to save our case before it became too late. And for us it was, indeed, too late but at that time we were too naive to realize that, from some attorney's standpoint, there is more money to be made in lawsuits and endless legal hearings than resolving a trademark dispute quickly & amicably for the client before it gets to that irreversible point. We hope this review helps others learn from what turned out to be a very painful experience for us.