Jane Grace Michalakes

This review is completely unrelated to the outcome of my case. I felt compelled to write it to caution others to consider other attorneys because you may be able to save yourself thousands of dollars. There are 3 main factors that have led me to write this candid review: 1) Dishonesty, 2) Inexperienc...e, 3) Money-seeking. 1) DISHONESTY: Jane will give you false hope of success in the name of “optimism”. After losing the initial motion, we started discussing a possible appeal. Jane quoted me a chance of success to be up to 50% when in reality it was less than 5% to 15%. Other firms recommended not proceeding with an appeal. To quote one attorney, "...I still don't feel that our firm will have a high potential of prevailing on the requested appeal". Jane was never candid like this, but instead kept covering her known loss by repeating statements such as “but we don’t know what the judge is going to decide”. When confronted about the drastic difference in appeal percentage estimates, Jane said she’s “not a numbers person”. It's difficult to believe that someone who has a doctorate degree and is obviously intelligent does not have an understanding of basic statistics. One can only deduce that she is after money and not the best interest of the client. Had she not taken this approach of “optimism” and a money-grab, I would have taken my ex-husband/abuser up on a different financial offer that would have freed me from him much sooner than 11 years from now. During my final conversation with Jane (after I had declined proceeding with an appeal), Jane commented “I stopped billing you a long time ago”…yet I was billed for every single item thereafter. I always expect to pay my bills, so this is simply the principle of the comment which turned out to be a blatant lie. Your attorney should never lie to you. When I sent an email to Jane and Gavin Halligan (partner) inquiring what she meant by that comment, I never received a reply. 2) INEXPERIENCE: Jane is inexperienced and will either take a long time to do research or frequently have to go to Gavin to discuss your case. Because the client gets billed for both of these delays, Jane should truly be billing at a lower hourly rate until she becomes more efficient. As an example, I was billed $800 for an email response that took nearly a week to receive from her. I thought my attorney had "ghosted" me because she had set a deadline for a decision regarding my appeal, but the responses I needed from her to make a decision were pending that email response. For the initial filing, I provided Jane with the same information at least 5 times because it seemed like it would very specifically address the court rule we were filing under. She did not include the information in the initial filing. She only included it in a response after I mentioned it AGAIN (but a response is not taken into consideration in the judge's ruling - something Jane did not know). After receiving the judge's order denial, it seems my case would have had a better chance if she had included the information I provided repeatedly. When I asked Jane what she would have done differently if she was filing all over again, she said "oh I don't know" and then didn't elaborate further. Clearly, she had not done any self-reflection to learn from this loss for future clients. 3) MONEY-SEEKING: Shortly after the initial consultation, I was informed by other firms that my initial filing would have cost $3k on the high end. Jane billed me $10k for this. In addition, she mentioned that should I decide to proceed with an appeal the retainer would increase from $5k to $20k and that the appeal itself would likely cost $20k. This was immediately unsettling, but she said most firms increase to this amount for appeals. After discussing with 5 other firms found on the same websites, their retainer remained at $5k-$7.5k and were surprised to hear the $20k fee. Be prepared to be billed promptly every 2 weeks to keep your retainer at $5k.

Jane Michalakes was my attorney for my divorce process. Although I had my doubts in the beginning as I thought she was being "too nice" responding to my ex she came through very professionally in the end and put the ex in their place when she needed to. Jane and her team of paralegals/staff at Hall...igan LLC did a wonderful job at handling all the required documents, mediation, research, being the middle person with the ex, and etc... I would highly recommend them. Thanks again for all your hard work.