Caroline Hoffman Janzen

I believe Caroline must have some sort of degenerative neurological condition (dementia?) because she passed the BAR at some point and has some positive reviews, so she must not have always been the way she is. Think Colombo…but with dementia, and angry when you call her out on stuff she’s missing. ...She’d be a super cute cartoon character, but when it’s the lawyer handling one of the most important issues you’ve ever faced in your life who literally can’t remember anything you tell her from conversation to conversation and absolutely refused to read…it gets terrifying fast. My first hearing with her she called me at 9pm the night before knowing nothing about my case after having weeks to prepare but was clearly just getting started on it. Showed up to court completely unprepared, late and disheveled. Second hearing she refused to do any prep with me for, literally yelled at me and said, “relax, I’ve got this”, then didn’t even show up to the hearing. Her husband showed up for her (late) knew nothing about my case, and I got decimated. She sent me pages and pages and pages of crazy rambling emails about how great a lawyer she was and how well she was going to take such great care of me (I’m not kidding…at weird hours, 1am, like she was drunk and dictating to ChatGPT). Weirdest thing was her billing. There were lots of charges that shouldn’t have been there, lots of work she said she did but was impossible because of the timing of things. Then “little” things like her charging travel time separate, 7 hours of prep separate, then 2.5 hours for a hearing that was only one hour long. So she gave herself a $600 tip? My heart goes out to her if it really is dementia because it does look a lot like it. That said, I’d consider not falling for her “I’m such a great lawyer” story and pick a different lawyer. I’m guessing the reviews here are either fake or from before her brain condition got bad.

We recently retained Caroline for a very complicated and chaotic case involving our grandchildren. She has been thorough, careful, thoughtful, compassionate and given sound and directive advice. She has answered phone calls late at night and been available for every problem we have encountered. Sh...e has been firm with us when we have made mistakes but has also defended us and walked us through how to correct ourselves. She is proactive and strategic. She is also very insightful. We have already in just a few weeks received much more than our money's worth.