Swati Sumit Desai

Swati was the second lawyer I hired after a five year ongoing divorce case. The first firm I hired was terrible and I'll just leave it at that. After an initial bad experience with the family law world, I decided to do my due diligence before hiring another lawyer, plus, I was doing pretty bad financ...ially and couldn't really afford to hire any firm. Luckily, my ex-wife's situation wasn't amazing either and she had to drop her lawyer as well due to financial reasons, which resulted in both of us continuing our case pro-per. This led me to a two and a half year long journey where I had contacted dozens and dozens of family law firms and lawyers, getting as much free advise as I could and occasionally paying for an hour or two of consultation whenever I could afford it. In the process, I become very familiar with different lawyers all the way from the Valley down to Orange County. I talked and met with any type of lawyer you could imagine, from highly experience competent ones, to complete amateurs that were just trying to make a quick buck. I contacted Swati's firm about a year into my search and received a great consultation from one of her lawyers, but unfortunately didn't have the funds to hire them at the time. Fast forward to a year and a half later, my case was on track to go to trial and my ex-wife got herself a new lawyer and so I found myself borrowing money and saving any penny I had, so I could hire one as well. I contacted Swati's office again and unfortunately, they were not available to take my case. After some convincing and Swati's calendar becoming clearer, she was able to accept my case. Best course of events in my six year case (not a typo). We had a hearing coming up about a week after I had hired her. Swati prepared and showed up to the hearing with as much preparation she could have had in that short amount of time (my case was very complicated with many moving parts) and against my expectations, delivered a flawless representation of my position and showed the other side (that until that day in court wasn't aware that I had hired a lawyer) that they are going to have an extremely difficult time litigating this case. My case was set for trial, and we ended up settling before then and against all odds (I forgot to mention that my ex-wife received a pro-bono lawyer which meant she had zero overhead going to trial and a law incentive to settle as a result). Swati and her team were extremely competent, savvy, knowledgeable and most importantly - honest and caring. I even asked Swati during one of our meetings, a couple of weeks before the commendatory settlement hearing was held, what would her incentive be to settle my case versus going to trial which will result in hundreds of billable hours for her. She explained that what I described isn't rare in the family law industry and that in fact, in some conferences they teach lawyers how to deploy billing strategies like the one I was worried about, but that she is not the person to take advantage of her clients and will always push for the client to spend the lease amount they need on their legal defense. Even after explaining that, I was still skeptical. However, Swati came through with her promise and her and her team pushed to settle my case and got me a great outcome, ended saving me a lot of time and money and made me believe that despite what I largely came across in the field, that even though rare, there are still lawyers that are competent, professional, honest and caring out there. Can't recommend her enough.

Swati and her assistant attorney Nisha were amazing in my case. They answered all of my questions in a very quick fashion. They were reasonable in price. Unfortunately my case was complex and required many court appearances. I had to let them go, but only because of finances. If I had more money I wo...uld have loved to keep them.