Anne Wakefield

I went the distance with Anne Wakefield, all the way to a multi-week trial in 2018 at the cost of $200,000 (yes, two hundred thousand dollars), and I regret having done so. We did not even show up with all the required documents, such as financial statements. After trial, when it was clear the ju...dge did not take our side, she disappeared. She did not respond to emails from me or opposing counsel, however urgent, for roughly 90 days. In pre-trial hearings she consistently failed to do the extra work to set us up for success. I only know this because after the bad trial outcome I had to litigate for six further years on the appeal and post-trial hearings. We then prevailed because the facts of the case had always been in my favor. By the time I was done having other legal teams fix her poor work I was another $200,000 in the hole. But I learned from those new teams what she had failed to do. She also has a poor comprehension of domestic violence, and her client management skills leave something to be desired. For instance, she had constant crises on due dates but failed to warn me that she would need all my time on due date mornings. I eventually learned this and learned to take the day off work on due dates. For her, however, she seemed utterly surprised every time that she was once again behind schedule. Disappointing. But at least cheaper than others.

Anne Wakefield may be on the pricer side of family law attorneys but she is well worth it. In my case she was able turn one physical altercation with a tenant, and a granted DVPO where there were no accusations of domestic violence, only that the person was in fear because the respondent's behavio...r was erradic(not towards the petitioner) and get the judge to find that these two things constituted a history of domestic violence, so parenting rights were taken away per RCW 26.09. 191. Not only that but she was able to get her friend who is a judge to try the case even though it wasn't assigned to him. I mean the first words during the trial were the judge saying that he was friend with opposing counsel but that he was choosing not to recuse himself. This woman is highly capable and if you want to win your case and you can come up with the money, she's your best bet!

I received a referral to Anne from a friend of a friend because I was looking for a more aggressive lawyer to help me try to get my divorce settled vs going to trial. My previous attorney had already completed all of my paperwork (i.e. Final orders for divorce, child support, parenting plan) however... the other party’s lawyer was incompetent and instead of making any attempts to work towards settlement, seemed to be waiting for trial. I met with Anne via Zoom and found her to come off as confident and proactive. I hired her shortly after. Soon after that I was asked about pushing back my upcoming court dates so that they had time to reach out to the other party’s attorney. I was not contacted by Anne again. Somewhere in this timeframe and completely unknown to me I was handed off to another associate Dylana Jones, who I hadn’t met or talked to. I found out after dismissing them that paperwork had even been filed to replace Anne with Dylana on my case, and I had no idea this had even been done. From here, everything seemed to spiral. The bills that I received were for ludicrous amounts, especially for the minimal work that was done. As an example - They forwarded me a generic document for a Request for Production of documents to be sent to opposing counsel, that somehow seemed to have taken hours to be completed, and I was charged for this “work” as well as for the time taken to send it to the paralegal, who then put it into an email and sent it to me and then billed me more for that time as well. Of course the paralegals would be reimbursed for their time, but why would I be paying for you to send it to them and paying for them to send it to me, when it could have just been sent directly to me without the extra costs? I was also asked about setting up mediation, but it was never mentioned to me that by doing so we were skipping over a zero-cost settlement conference and that because of the history of my relationship, I also had the option to have mediation waived. I didn’t find any of this out until I happened to randomly read about this process online. I contacted Dylana to ask when my settlement conference was scheduled, only to be told that they had canceled if for the mediation and that waiving the mediation could have also been a possibility. In approximately 3 months, they managed to bill me over $6,000 essentially for moving a court date, making those other changes mentioned (that I wasn’t even told about) , and sending out a generic request for production to the other party. We exchanged VERY few emails and did not talk on the phone. There were no trials or conferences completed. Nothing else was accomplished. I was told that because my other documents were on another attorney’s letterhead and pdf, that they had to transfer the information, however this shouldn’t be a huge undertaking, and had they mentioned that in advance, I could have easily transferred the information myself. My prior attorney completed multiple proposals, all final documents, and a significant amount of email interaction with me and the opposing counsel over a span of 7 months and still didn’t go through as many billable hours as they claimed. He did 4x as much work for less than I paid them. I feel completely scammed. I got nothing for my money and to me $6000 in 3 months for a divorce where all the paperwork was already completed and the opposing counsel wasn’t even responding with offers, documents, or counters, is appalling. I would never recommend them to anyone, I believe that they definitely over-bill and pad their hours. I am actually worse off than before for having hired them. ’m out of $6,000 that I desperately needed, I lost the opportunity for a settlement conference that I would have liked to have had, I have court dates pushed back when I really want this to be over as soon as possible, and I have nothing more to show for all of this then I did before I hired them.

Anne Wakefield is a gem. She understands how to hold your hand through divorce and creating parenting plans-- which can be one of the most difficult processes of your life. Anne was quick to respond, efficient, extremely knowledgeable and kind. Don't underestimate her, though, she was tough when she ...needed to be. I would highly recommend and trust Wakefield Legal with any legal needs in the future.