Hi there,
I made two huge mistakes in my life. First was the wrong marriage, and the second was choosing the wrong lawyer to get rid of the first mistake.
I went through a HUGE stress and costs, not only to deal with my ex but also deal with my lawyer. In addition to all these, I am a stage IV ...breast cancer patient, with a lesion in my brain, I had loss of coordination/dizziness during my final court; i also went through two years of cancer treatments which made me physically and mentally very fragile.
I thought hiring a lawyer will give me a peace of mind, and decrease my anxiety level, but it was not so.
I will try to explain my experience;
1- Mr. Joseph Land never clearly explained the process; everything was always a question for me which was never answered straight forward.
- I had to send multiple emails to Joseph and his team, to get a straight answer to one simple question; I was always begging for information. All he always said was "don't worry, everything will be okay!" There was nothing to make me feel that everything was all right!
In the end, when the judge gave the final decision and gave the order for a QDRO; the only thing Joseph Land told me was "Congrats" and left me. He didn't explain what my next step was. What is a QDRO? Was he going to finalize that process? I had to go through additional hours to find out what my next step was; finally, I emailed and called him!
2- I never knew who to contact in his office. It seems the office is not organized, and that, of course, caused me lots of stress. He sometimes didn't even notice my emails.
3- The office assistants who filled-out the forms constantly asked repeated questions and requested the same documents which I had already provided; but the forms always ended up with errors; the last one was not corrected despite my complaint. In the end, my case was submitted to the judge with a couple of errors. They fixed one of the errors, which took an additional 2 months. However, one was never fixed. I just didn't follow up on correcting that mistake, because it would take another couple of months. I'm happy it didn't give me any problems.
5- He charged me $200 to $250 per hour for a regular office assistant for even opening my emails, or saving my attachments.
6- His office didn't inform me for the costs of transcript which was $700 to $800; I paid that amount without my consent! I didn't complaint because he had my case, and I didn't want him to ruin it.
My case was finalized recently, and I’m very happy that I survived after all the anxiety I went through. My husband didn’t get the alimony he was asking for; but it is hard to believe that with my health condition, the judge would have decided otherwise, with or without a lawyer. My medical documents could win the case.
Thank you for reading.