Debra R Schoenberg

Please do not hire this law firm. My late fiancé and I hired this firm to Set Aside his divorce in CA and to keep his son but ended up losing both. The firm was expensive and sloppy. We started with Debra, transferred to Joanne funke then Eric Glasser, each time we had to repeat the process of explai...ning our situation and providing numerous documents over again. A complete waste of money and time. Finally, despite the fact that I reminded Eric to File the Motion to Set Aside Judgement 13 times, he refused and we missed our Statute of Limitations and ultimately lost case because of it. When we finally went to trial with a different law firm, the judge agreed we had a solid case but could not hear our argument because Schoenberg, the first law firm we hired, did not file the motion to set aside judgement for us and we missed our statute of limitation.

While I believe Ms. Schoenberg herself is a gifted attorney and salesperson, I found her staff to be less so. Here's a specific example of why you may be better served by another firm. This is one of many, many examples of the firm's extraordinary billing practices. Tip of the billing iceberg. M...y response was filed via fax, was filed incorrectly by the staff at Schoenberg, and consequently rejected by the court. Here are the billing entries I received, for the fax filing itself. The entries aren't for the content of the filing, but just the admin of getting it to the court. I was charged for the work even when the work wasn't done correctly, and ultimately the fax wasn't accepted. The work was done by a paralegal, who charged $295 per hour. The work was spread out over four days, and billed in increments of .1 hour. 1. emails to and from admin staff regarding fax filing 2. email to [XX] regarding fax filing 3. emails to and from [XX] regarding the same 4. draft Fax Filing Form 5. prepare Proof of Service (for fax filing) 6. email to [XX] regarding fax filing Proof of Service's to Alameda Court 7. draft additional fax filing form 8. Email from [XX] regarding fax filing confirmation 9. fax filing proof to client file 10. (2) emails to Court regarding fax filing from last week and serving courtesy copies of supplemental declaration 11. Call to Swift Attorney Service regarding status of court filing (x2) 12. call to Alameda fax file contact line (x3), 13. emails to and from [XX] regarding the same 14. emails to and from [XX] regarding Register of Actions 15. Email from [XX] regarding emailing department regarding fax filed responsive declaration not showing on Register of Actions 16. email to [XX] regarding forwarding email sent to department on x/xx To no one's surprise, the retainer was exhausted quickly. You will get better representation for your money elsewhere.

My review is not specific to Debra herself but to the attention and service I have received from the staff assigned to my case. I had to register an out of state co parenting plan with the state of California. I was told that a 5K retainer would be enough to execute this, from 5K we went to 6.5K an...d finally to 8.5K. Still today I do not know if the plan is officially registered or not but the accounting group keeps asking for money. Throughout the process I think the communication was scarce and the paralegal assist was poor as the documentation was prepared wrongly the first time and my counterpart was served without me being able to give them the heads up causing unnecessary stress. I would not recommend.

I was referred to Debra by a nonprofit group that helps women in abusive relationships like myself. They told me Debra wanted to help, so I called and set up a phone consultation with her assistant, letting her know I was being referred from Shalom Bayit because i wanted to try to divorce my abusive ...husband. It was a big, emotional, and scary step for me, but I was finally doing it. However, from the second Debra picked up the phone, she was so hostile and intimidating, I started crying. She interrupted me a few seconds into me explaining my situation and said she didn't care about any of that, she had a checklist she needed to get through. Then she barked orders at me like a drill sergeant. "WHEN did he last try to hit you?" "It was right after Thanksgiving-" "Did I ASK what holiday it was after? NO! Give me a date! You have to give me a date! HOW close did his hand come to your face?" "A few inches-" "NO!!!! Was it ONE inches or THREE inches?!" The conversation went on like that, with me shaking and crying into the phone, wondering if I'd made a terrible mistake. Finally, she made it through her checklist, so I tried asking my question finally (concerning custody of my son and how to best protect him) , and she shut me down and said she didn't want to talk to me any more until I got a restraining order against my husband, and hung up. After consulting with a few other lawyers (none of whom treated me like that!) I found out that restraining orders are actually very complicated and not always the best solution even in abuse situations. I can't believe Debra was ready to shout advice at me without listening to my situation. Why did she ever volunteer to help abused women?

We first met with Debra and she was very empathetic to our plight, my partner going through a very messy divorce. Mid way he realized he needed representation as his ex had acquired a very skilled lawyer pro-bono who was willing to use whatever tactics to win. She listened and made some very enco...uraging recommendations. I remember almost crying as we walked home that day feeling like finally things would be put right. How very wrong we were. Over the next 10 days, Debra met with us twice. Once to make empty promises and give false hope and last to charge my credit card $10,000 for her retainer. I remember her relating to my partner as they both have Jewish background and both had parents that were Holocaust survivors. We felt this woman would really help us. She seemed to "understand". As she left the room that second (and last) meeting after taking the $10000, she turned and said, "Just remember no matter how bad it gets, it's not Auschwitz." and walked away laughing. We never saw her her again. She assigned us one of her assistants who ended up blowing through our entire retainer and then some in 10 days. We got a bill on day 10 before any actual work had been done or produced other than a few letters to the opposing lawyer. The amount was for several thousand over our retainer which had to be paid before any more work was done. Then they demanded another $6000 retainer over and above. We got that on Friday afternoon. We both were sick all weekend, realizing we had been had.