Frances V. Dunham

I have been a client of Frances Dunham for 3 years. I highly reccomend her for very complex difficult cases regarding child custody and divorce. She knows her business, 20 years experience is where it all comes from. If you have a difficult case regarding children, perhaps foster parents in cus...tody battle with biological parents or other family law matters. Frances is the absolute best at what she does! She doesn't make the the laws, She knows it, and knows how to follow it from any angle. She is strong, powerful, intelligent, compassionate, as she herself is a parent putting a $ amount to her fees in like comparing a Mercedes to Kia ...both great vehicles, which one do feel safer in if you were to crash? EXACTLY ! Would I hire again? ABSOLUTELY

We hired Ms. Dunham for a child custody case a few years ago and it was the worse experience ever. We mainly dealt with her assistant, when we appeared in court she was not prepared. It was as if she had never heard of our situation. If I hadn't brought my own material to court that day we would h...ave had nothing to work with. When we arrived in court we were told that our retainer had been used up. Yet we had never received a bill in all the months prior to court to inform us of the zero balance. There were a lot of mistakes made in our hearing because of her lack of or should I say no preparation. It was a very lengthy hearing and when it was all said and done the outcome was not what we had hoped for to say the least. I attempted to contact Ms. Dunham the following day for advice on our case and she refused to speak to me because we now had a very large bill that needed to be paid prior to having a conversation with me. She finally came to the phone after I agrued the fact that we had never received a bill however all she said was that she didn't have to legally talk to me because I had a balance. She didn't care enough to do her job, to do the job she was hired to do. We should have reported her to the state bar but I was so exhausted after our case that I couldn't find the energy to do it. Especially because I did all the dirty work for her and yet I paid her thousands of dollars to do nothing. I hope somebody finds this information helpful. I've noticed how she's responded to some of the commits on this site however the truth speaks loudly when out of the thousands of recommendations she has apparently had, not one has bothered to make a positive comment about her. Every single rating on here is poor and she only got that from me because I couldn't go lower with my rating.

I hired Frances Dunham months ago, but to this day, her lack of communication skills and poor support still greatly disturb me. My initial consultation led me to believe that I had hired the right counselor for the situation. She informed me that she was all about building a trusting relationship w...ith her clients, but after that first visit, it was as if there was a bait and switch with attorneys. Phone calls and emails were ignored, messages got crossed and twisted, and everything quickly went downhill from there…I felt like a big bother the few times I called with questions and always felt very rushed to get off the phone. I was also misled numerous times with either inaccurate information, or no information at all. All of this caused me great distress and still does to this day. Her admin assistant is just as lacking with communication skills and is very non-personable. Overall, it was a very disappointing, frustrating and overpriced experience. Regretfully, I could never recommend this law office as a result.

I've been working with Frances and I must say the focus seems mostly on the money not the client. I feel at times I should have just represented myself because the money I've invested has not been worth the return thus far. Communication is a very big issue with Frances and her legal assistant . Thi...s lack of communication negativity affecting me and my case. I would not recommend Frances.