Brian Edward Flannery

Brian Flannery was a horrible lawyer. He did not keep informed with anything that was going on concernig my paperwork with my divorce. They took me to temporary orders hearing and absolutely nothing got accomplished for me. The fees they charged were 250 an hour and even after they did nothing for me... dropped me right before mediation. He never talked with me about issues that needed to be discussed with my divorce and when I would call to try and speak with him I'd never get a call back and I would have to leave messages. The day of my temporary orders he called me five minutes before the court started.I would never recommend him or Clawson and Clawson to anybody going through a divorce, especially a military divorce. They were not at all knowledgeable on my situation and they definitely did not put me first in this client attorney relationship. I hope that people see this review before they make the same mistake I did.

I'm in the military and recently had a divorce in Colorado in which I had consulted with Matt Clawson and he said that he would take on my case. I paid a $5,000 dollar retainer fee up front for his service. An hour before the initial status conference, I was passed off to Brian Flannery under the gui...se that he would be cheaper for me and conflicting schedules with Matt. However, I attended the Initial Status Conference with Brian. During the short walk to the courthouse, he told me not to agree to anything and that he was going to "play dumb" in order to have little conversation with the opposing attorney because he stated that she bullied a lot of attorney's around. He stated at least 5 times, during the ISO, that he didn't know any particulars about the case because he had just taken the case that day. This was embarrassing. Furthermore, his knowledge of military/federal law was minimal at best. Anyhow, I had to relocate to a different state due to the military and so I had to appear by phone during later court hearings. The Temporary Orders hearing was approximately 1 month later and it was set for me to appear by telephone. Just one hour prior to the hearing, Brian calls me and we finally began discussing our approach to the case. Of note, I had been in constant contact with the Mr. Flannery and the resident paralegal, through phone but primarily through email, discussing issues that were ongoing under the presumption that the paralegal was passing the information to Mr. Flannery. I would rarely get a response from Mr. Flannery as his paralegal would answer my questions. I was worried about the hearing because I hadn't heard anything about how we were going to approach it. Furthermore, all they kept asking for was for me to provide all documents, which I complied, that the opposing attorney was asking for while they weren't giving us anything in return. This led to certain problems. During the short discussion that I had with him an hour prior to the hearing, he seemed like he was jumping around a bit and left me concerned. The hearing didn't go well at all and my ex later told me that he was making faces during the hearing while I was testifying. Three weeks later, I received a bill from Clawson and Clawson in the amount of approx. $4,600 dollars. I thought that this was high but to be taken out of the retainer fee. That was not the case and I would later find out. One week before mediation was to take place about a month and a half later, I received another bill. This time, for $7,900. I called to talk to Clawson and Clawson about the bill and they told me that they wanted to withdrawal from my case unless I paid them at that point. I asked if I could set up a payment plan and they said no. I told them to withdrawal. The problem with this is that I had only had direct contact with Brian just a couple of times during this time frame, so I didn't quite understand. Furthermore, nothing had been done by him. After the TO hearing, the opposing attorney and her client had 10 days to provide paperwork necessary for me to prepare a fight for future hearings. This had not been done. I contacted Brian/the paralegal numerous times about this and they did nothing about it. Now I was alone and had no money to pay them or hire another attorney because of the money that I was ordered to pay after the TO hearing. Regardless, I had to finish the case by myself and actually did better by myself during Final Orders. However, I'm currently still in debt to Clawson and Clawson/Mr. Flannery for $8,200 and accruing interest on the amount as well as the original $5,000 loan in which I took out in order to retain Matt Clawson as my attorney.