Sean Patrick King

I contacted Leigh Jorgeson at Jorgeson Pittman LLP for a simple *uncontested* divorce as a reference from a friend. She assigned Sean King as a Sr Associate to work my case and I can easily say that it has been the most emotionally distressing part of the divorce. My (ex) wife and I had grown apar...t during covid and had mutually decided to go our own ways, our finances were already separate, no kids, we were in full agreement, and as mentioned above, completely uncontested. No bad feelings between us whatsoever. What went wrong? By the end, Sean King had more than doubled his $$$ estimate (which was already far more than other attorneys had estimated for a simple uncontested divorce) and more than tripled the amount of time he estimated to finalize the divorce. The whole point of hiring him was to do it correctly and expedite the divorce so that we could get on with our lives. My opinion is that he is incompetent, lacks empathy, and very bad at communicating. He started the real work on my case in early May. We had our expected correspondences. In the end of June, we met for a Final settlement proposal review and shortly after he clearly stated that we would resolve the case by “the end of July, if not earlier.” We then met for another Final Settlement review in August, and then for another Final Settlement Review mid-October. I’d been extremely patient, I understand that these things can sometimes take time, but nearly 3 months late and absolutely no communication from him why we were not already finished. He also contacted me to tell me that my retainer needed a refill. When I asked him why the case was not already resolved, and why more money was needed, his tone became defensive and aggressive towards me. How dare I question why he’s late and over budget!?! At this point, everything seemed to just get delayed further and further, and meanwhile I feel like was being charged for anything he could think of. It felt retaliatory, in my opinion. Considering he communicated in June that we were almost done, I fell it quite justified to ask. I tried to calm myself and asked that he simply finish the divorce before the end of the year, it was a simple request. His responses were delayed a week or more, many times, for simple questions. This wasn’t necessarily new, he also would say he would send out an email or doc to me and then never get to it. I’m convinced he did this on purpose to push out the finalization of the divorce into the next year, just to be spiteful. When January started, I even looked into a different lawyer so I could just get this done. Eventually, I got the message stating it was finished. Overall it took him 7 *more* months to finalize the divorce from the July estimate. He was confrontational and blamed me for any delays, which was infuriating and a lie. He took absolutely no responsibility for the 9 months it took him to take this from start to finish, while it was his action for 99% of the time. I prefer to have a lawyer who is responsible for his own actions, or inactions for that matter. I get it… money and time are just estimates. Estimates can differ from reality, but usually only if there are additional or extenuating circumstances. While there was single clause that we went back and forth on a couple times, overall this was a slam dunk case, all it needed was filing. My opinion after dealing with all of this is that he is just not competent as a divorce lawyer. I am very lucky that my ex-wife and I are on very good terms. He seemed to not see the bigger picture that our uncontested divorce allowed me to get out of a marriage without paying any money whatsoever as part of the settlement. I could not even imagine hiring him for a contested divorce if he can’t successfully navigate a very simple uncontested divorce.