Anne M Whatley

I hired Anne Whately in February 2023 for my divorce case after my previous attorney went on maternity leave. Initially, she seemed competent during our first conversation, but things quickly went downhill from there. I chose Anne because her hourly rates were lower, ignoring the negative reviews ...on Yelp and Avvo—and I paid the price for that mistake. She mentioned not having a paralegal, which means she does all the work herself. While her rates may be lower, this setup ultimately made things more expensive in my opinion. Please don’t overlook these reviews as I did. My case was straightforward, but Anne consistently made it seem more complicated than it needed to be. Every time an issue arose, she made it appear as though it was my fault. I repeatedly asked to meet with her in person to discuss the case, believing in-person interactions would help clarify things. She refused every time, not even offering a Zoom call—only phone calls, which was a red flag. Anne also turned minor issues into major complications and rarely pushed back on my spouse’s attorney. She even urged me to accept offers that left money on the table. We continued to have ongoing issues and we finally decided to part ways after I had paid her thousands of dollars to address issues which should have been resolved in 1/10th of time Anne spent on them and that too without my satisfaction. After parting ways with Anne, I met with two other attorneys who provided creative solutions that Anne hadn’t even considered. Taking their advice, I personally met with my spouse’s attorney to negotiate. To my surprise, the conversation was 10 times easier than dealing with Anne. I was able to push back on several points where Anne had previously told me to compromise, and I discovered she had even misunderstood parts of their settlement offer. Incredibly, within just one day of Anne no longer handling my case, I settled it on much better terms than anything she had suggested. I re-negotated more than half of the settlement terms Anne had suggested me to agree on. Looking back, I’m 100% confident I should never have hired Anne Whately. If I could negotiate a better outcome myself, that says a lot about her performance. In short, please take the negative reviews seriously and learn from my experience.

The Anne Whatley Law Firm failed me in my divorce proceedings over and over again. I was represented by Anne's firm for about a year before I had to finally fire them and find a competent attorney. During my time with the Whatley Law Firm I was represented by 3 different attorneys because they kep...t quitting. Each time I was assigned a new attorney, they were worse than the one before. My 3rd attorney was fresh out of school and in way over her head. I found out she was carrying a caseload of about 80 cases which may or may not be normal but she didn't know what she was doing or how to help me and she failed me miserably in the courtroom. So bad that the judge reprimanded her and sent us away. I was finally able to pull enough money together at that point to fire them and hire a new attorney but it cost me a lot of money and wasted time in an already terribly expensive process. I would not recommend this law firm to anyone... including my ex!

We hired Anne Whatley to represent our family in a child custody case in Contra Costa County CA. Anne Whatley's practice looked very nice from the outside and all employees were extremely polite when soliciting our business. Our case was a very simple child custody case envolving my wifes and I's... 3 year old son Chase. Chase is my step son. My wife has been the sole provider for this child since his birth. I have been involved in his life since he turned 1. He is an extremely happy child with a wonderful home. When Chase turned 2 years old my wife filed with the courts for sole custody of Chase. Chase's biological father did not show up for any of the court appearances, and thus my wife was granted sole physical and legal custody. In May of 2011 I was promoted with the U.S Government from my position in San Francisco, CA to a position in Washington DC. We intended to move to Washington DC and bring Chase with us, as he has lived with us 100% of the time, seeing his biological father 2 times a month for 4 hours a piece. When Chase's biological father found out about the move he filed papers with the court to have the original custody orders ammended without advising us. He then showed up at our house the day before we were moving and served the papers on my wife. At this time we contacted Anne and retained her as our attorney. Our initial opinion of her was very positive. We explained to Anne the situation and advised her of our wishes. We explained to Anne Chase's biological fathers previous criminal history. Explaining that he is a federal felon currently on federal probation and has within the week been charged with his 4th probation violation. Anne and her paralegals were extremely disorganized during the process and in spite of my wife and I personally providing them with numerous documents that should have completely nolified this man's attempt to ammend custody. He was able to get some custody back. Anne was completely clueless about our case when arriving at hearing dates, and would constantly provide my wife and I with negative feedback and complexities pertaining to a very simple case. We will now have to fight for the next 15 years for our son, when the situation should have been solved very easily. After the hearing we terminated our association with Anne Whatley. We were then charged a very large amount for her services, which we in turn had to debate with her. Our experience with her law firm was completely negative. I would not recommend the Anne Whatley law firm to anyone seeking legal counsel in Northern California.