Frederick John Schaefer

Promised the world, over 2 and a half years and thousands of dollars later I received nothing. Bickering with his wife the whole time in court like it was their first time. Absolutely embarrassing. Did nothing for me and my daughter. Typical used car salesman, take your money and leave you high and d...ry. Complete let down, total waste of time and money, would have rather represented myself.

To start, he would frequently forget details of our case. It was obvious some of his paperwork was copy and pasted because reading through it, he would mix up the sex of the client he was writing about, i.e. "she" instead of "he." His paralegal, also his wife, seemed to do most of the leg work. He al...so frequently made snide remarks about the other party's lawyer, which was completely unprofessional. Finally, on the big day, he needed an hour recess because he was working another case at the same time we were in court! Court took only an hour excluding the recess during which he was phone conferencing another case, and charged us for a full two hours! He came with a list of questions he was going to ask right before we went into court... which did not seem to make any sense and half of which were not even asked, and charged us for that too! During court, he was not even paying attention to what the other lawyer was asking (on either side), was side talking with his paralegal the entire time, and at one point actually left the courtroom. How disrespectful! We had given some evidence to him regarding the other party which only made us look ridiculous in court... which I would have thought that after being in practice for so long, he would have known it was senseless to bring it in. This, among other things, seriously questioned his level of competence. No wonder the judge did not rule in our favor. Then when we brought up our concerns afterward, his response was simply that nobody gets what they want and at least the other party didn't get as much money as they anticipated. He must have missed the part about how this was not about money but about the care and safety of a little girl! Now we are stuck with a $3k bill after a $1500 retainer. Just unbelievable.