Marcus F Westervelt

After my second hearing, I was faced with decisions and some tough realizations both during mediation and in the court room. I found Mr. Westervelt to be very quick and responsive to phone calls, emails, and questions I had (prior to, during, and after my court hearings) in my case. Mr. Westervelt ...was court-appointed to represent me in my case and during the last hearing, it became very clear that I was going to need to hire an attorney if I wanted to have any real chance at a fair trial. Juvenile dependency cases, I have come to find out, are among the most complex and intensive cases within the court system-definitely requiring much more time and effort than a court-appointed attorney is able to give. I hired a new attorney later that month after speaking with around 20 (literally!) I would not recommend anyone to keep with a court-appointed attorney in juvenile dependency cases unless they absolutely have no choice. These attorneys are handling your case, along with a stack of who knows how many other court-appointed client cases, and then their clients paying them out of pocket on top of it. You are dealing with a child's life and future and these attorneys have the power to impact the outcome of that case. To not give these attorneys the time they need to dedicate themselves 100% to that kind of a case should be illegal...It is not fair to the attorney, the client, and most of all, it is unfair to the child involved. Mr. Westervelt showed to be trustworthy, responding to my emails and calls that day or the next, and seemed very knowledgeable in these types of cases. I was disappointed, however, that I did not receive minute entry copies of our hearings. Some very important issues I had brought to his attention for the past several weeks were not voiced at all during mediation or in the courtroom. During his opening argument at our last hearing, Mr. Westervelt didn't sound thoroughly prepared and was missing important documents he was referencing in his opening argument. If he had requested these from me ahead of time, I would have happily provided them. The information and references he gave were outdated and it was hard to follow his overall argument; he just wasn't ready. Assertiveness of any kind was completely absent and it was very hard to follow him. However, in the process of trying to hire a private attorney, I did speak to many offices who were familiar with him, one of them even giving his name out as a referral. The problem is, I am not sure if the referral is due to his performance or if his name was being thrown around because he is one of the few attorneys who specialize in these types of cases (there is a very small pool of them and trust me they are hard to find!) Overall and in the short time he represented me, I found Mr. Westervelt to be a very nice man, great at following up, never any issues with trust, and certainly has knowledge in his field of practice.