Kim Laree Schnuelle

Kim Schneulle provided expert professional guidance to my son as he negotiated payment of accumulated child support to his child’s mother. Kim was extremely sensitive to some particularly delicate circumstances in this case. In addition to helping my son through the negotiations with his child’s mo...ther, Kim also was highly effective in communicating with the Division of Child Support, constructing a strong case for DCS to relieve him of his child support debt to the State. She was compassionate, timely with responses to our questions, offered excellent counsel, and kept our budget in mind helping to minimize costs whenever possible. I would recommend Kim to anyone who needs a knowledgeable, competent family law attorney.

I went through a very difficult and lengthy child support case. I live in another state, and Kim was able to represent me and navigate me through a minefield of issues of which I was previously unfamiliar with. Kim listened sympathetically to my concerns and addressed any questions that I had quick...ly. I believe Kim's attention to detail and exhaustive knowledge of family law were crucial to achieving the best possible positive result within the WA court system. I highly recommend her for anyone going through a child support case.

Kim represented me for a year to establish a child support order and a parenting plan. Throughout the process I felt like I was receiving good advice even when it isn't what I wanted to hear and that I was being kept informed of my options and the progress being made on the case. I felt like I coul...d rely on Kim and that she had my best interest at heart. I was especially impressed that everything was handled so smoothly and professionally given that I not only live out of state, but out of country. I would highly recommend Kim.

In need of hiring an attorney quickly, I was guided to McKinley Irvin by friends who are attorneys. Kim was available and had an extensive background as a litigator, which I anticipated would be helpful if my divorce became contentious. When my former spouse indicated an interest in settling out of c...ourt, that experience became less important. I found Kim to be disconnected from details related to my case, despite preparing detailed documents that contained all of the salient information she requested. At times, I would provide the same information multiple ways to address her questions. Assuming this may have been a bandwidth limitation on her part, I ensured I responded to her asks rapidly and clearly; it had minimal impact. These were small frustrations; my review is largely driven by three negative experiences working with Kim. 1/ Documents were not well written and contained inaccuracies/details that needed correction; these were all issues that could have been addressed by paying more attention. This and other experiences started to erode my trust in Kim as an attorney handling what it likely the most significant legal matter in my lifetime. 2/ The level of churn working with Kim is extraordinarily high. I would often get a string of emails (5, 6, 7...) that could have been more efficiently summarized in a single email. I calculated how much of my (large) bill was attributed to emails Kim sent; 25%. The issue with churn and working with an attorney that is compensated for the number of emails that they send, is that it creates thrash for the customer who has to sort through and decode a pile of emails; the amount of time I spent accommodating the resulting churn/thrash easily doubled the cost of the bill were I to factor in the extra time I spent in the process. 3/ When it came to settling, Kim pushed to resolve quickly under terms that only worked b/c I was willing to bend over backward to accomodate and reach a resolution. The terms we agreed to going into the mediation, which she was comfortable with, were quickly retracted. The counter attorney dominated the negotiation and Kim followed, despite a very large spread in the number of years of professional experience Kim had over the other attorney. Were I to do this all over again, I would interview attorneys more thoroughly; this experience left my unlikely to recommend McKinley Irvin. Were I to do this all over again knowing what I know now, I wouldn't work with Kim; I would seek out the attorney my former spouse used; I believe they were less expensive than Kim and they were likely much less expensive when factoring in the client's time preparing information and documents and communicating with Kim and her assistants.