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.