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4.4 /5.0

12 Client Reviews

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Showing 1 - 1 of 1 review | 1 star

Posted by Kurt | May 31, 2024

Inexperienced criminal defense attorney, false advertising, ruined my life with his mishandling and misrepresentation

I retained Mr. Knox as a criminal defense attorney in September 2021 after being arrested for a false felony DV charge and associated misdemeanor charges after an argument with my ex-partner. Mr. Knox visited me while in jail and said I needed to provide $10k upfront to take my case. At first h...e seemed understanding, knowledgeable, and engaged but that quickly shifted. After our initial meeting upon release from jail, he was mostly uncommunicative about the case, not responding to multiple inquires for weeks at a time, not even from his paralegals or office staff. He provided no information to me that I needed to hire a separate civil/family lawyer to deal with custody/visitation issues for my infant daughter, despite multiple inquires about that process. When I discovered that separately and asked him about it, he referred me to another attorney that actively made the situation with my ex worse. When I asked about what I could do proactively to demonstrate my willingness to comply with the legal process, he off-handedly said "Go register for one of those DV Intervention programs or whatever the [F-word] they are called". At our plea bargain in Feb 2022, he seemed more interested in sharing the fact that he knew the assistant DA personally than he did about the details of my case. When I protested that the assistant DA was repeating the lies my ex was spinning to the court, he told me to "shut up or you'll ruin everything". He did not attempt to counter them in any way. He allowed a No Contact Order against my infant daughter to be part of the felony plea down to misdemeanor, even though she was not harmed or involved in the incident in any way other than being 5 weeks old and in the room at the time. This allowed my ex to keep our daughter from me for the 2 years of my probation, without even sharing pictures or updates. He seemed completely uninterested with my concerns of being prevented from parenting my infant (and only) child. At no point did he share with me the evidence provided in the police arrest report that demonstrated I was not guilty of the felony, or question the poorly conducted investigation in any way. When I asked him, at the plea bargain, what his experience was with this kind of case, he hemmed and hawed, and only after multiple direct inquiries did he acknowledge he had never argued a felony DV case in trial. He was pushing the plea bargain because that is all he knew how to do. He had previously explained the risk of going to felony trial, but not that he had no experience doing so until pressed directly as we were walking into the courtroom. At no point did he disclose what the negative ramifications of pleading guilty to the misdemeanor could/would be. After the conviction and sentencing, he did not tell me anything about the probation requirement for immediately signing up for a Probation Officer, and I almost got an immediate probation violation. Within a few weeks of the plea bargain, he removed himself from representing me. He flat out did not know what he was doing, and rather than disclose that while I was under duress in jail, he took my $10K, did the bare minimum, and jumped ship as soon as possible. I lost my home, job, professional license, standing in my business community, friends, relationship with family members, and 2 years of my infant daughter's life because of his incompetence on a case that multiple other attorneys have since said was easily winnable. He didn't even try. He is a personal injury attorney that has no experience taking complex criminal defense cases to trial, and his mishandling of this case ruined my entire life. I would sue him for ethical misconduct and misrepresentation, but the 2 year statute of limitations has passed. I am reporting him to the bar for malpractice without disclosing his lack of experience. Do not hire him for complex criminal defense representation.

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