Frieda Gordon

Frieda met with me for $400 and said she would address my questions during that meeting. She did not. She implied that once I retained her, then she would provide a plan and keep me informed. This did not happen. She was abrupt and condescending from the first meeting. This attitude of my feelin...g like an inconvenience to deal with lasted the duration of the time with her. She discouraged me from getting financial clarity from the other side, she submitted court documents late to my detriment, when I reviewed my bill there were overbilling issues that she said she would address but did not. Her receptionist is also rude. The times Frieda was kind and available was when the retainer had run out and she wanted more money. There was never a plan provided althought I spent over $30,000. She claimed to know opposing counsel well and had insights in how to deal with the other attorney effectively, but that was not the case. I felt that working with Frieda and her office made my divorce harder as the mistakes and lack of accurate guidance hurt me and my case.

Frieda Gordon billed me $700 for a telephone consultation which was at best unhelpful, and at worst, outright theft. Before the consultation, I had to sign a contract along with credit card approval documents stating that she would bill me for $350 for one hour of phone consultation and an additional... $350 for one hour of "document preparation time". During the 47 minute phone consultation, which I recorded, she gave me only generic information regarding California probate law. When I questioned Ms. Gordon about the particulars of my case, she was obviously unprepared. On the recording, I can be heard asking her four separate times, "Did you read the documents?"  When I mentioned the name of the primary actor, a person whose name appears 122 times in the documents, (I did a word count) she had to ask me who that person was.  Looking back, I should have terminated her right then over the phone.  I have listened to the recording multiple times and have become convinced that Frieda Gordon is truly the embodiment of all  that can go wrong with a private practice attorney; she is corrupt and incompetent.  Before I could send her a  letter of termination, I received a new and unexpected contract from her in which she had raised her hourly billing rate to $400 per hour! In my research, the lowest advertised fees I found for probate attorneys in California were  $180 an hour. The fees charged by Cooper-Gordon are at the very top end of the scale. I recommend contacting one of the attorneys  listed on Bill Handel's web site located here:  http://www.handelonthelaw.com/home/  The method of screening these attorneys in not described anywhere on Bill Handel's site, but every single attorney I contacted answered my questions intelligently via e-mail, free of charge. Regarding Frieda Gordon's client-attorney contract; it is massive and curiously detailed. In it, she attempts to indemnify herself from every possible accusation a client could possibly make regarding "creative billing".  After looking it over again, I couldn't help but wonder if it was a catalog of past client billing accusations against her. Truly an odd document, which in my opinion, falls suspiciously short of what a good faith client-attorney  contract should be. One last comment. Negative reviews about professionals such as this one are typically short lived on the net. This is because attorneys, doctors, accountants etc, who garner these type of reviews employ "reputation repair" services. As of this writing in 2011,   I was able to find only one brief and poorly written positive review on Frieda Gordon, and not a single negative review, despite her being a practicing attorney for more than 25 years. So, you hereby have my permission to reprint this review anywhere it can serve the public good. 

If there were only a zero star rating. My wife and I went to Frieda to get a very simple pre-marital agreement written up. The terms were simple, and only after we paid her $3000 retainer did she tell us that she CATEGORICALLY REFUSED to sign a prenump with no spousal support. Last I checked, she... is supposed to author an agreement based on our goals, not her own ego! She wanted to litigate the entire divorce before we even got married. So when we fired her (to get another attorney who would do the contract as we wanted it) she refused to return the nearly $2500 left of the retainer that she had billed against! This is against the CA Bar Association's Rules of Professional Conduct section 3-700 D. What a nightmare.