Matthew Swain Webbeking

I was married to someone living in another country who I didn't want or need to be married to anymore. (When your spouse unfriends you from facebook, that's a good sign your marriage isn't going well.) My experience with Mathhew and his wonderful bilingual legal assistant Maria Rodriguez was the b...est part of this unpleasant process. I needed a lawyer who could help me get divorced from someone who lives in a different country -- one where Spanish is the spoken language. Matthew explained to me what needed to be done, and then he efficiently did what needed to be done: He got permission to serve papers internationally and then mailed the papers to where they needed to go; when the legally required amount of time had passed, he filed for and secured my divorce; and he and his assistant kept me informed about what was happening, throughout the process). He was up front with me about what it would cost, he was true to his word, and he did exactly what he said he was going to do (and he did it quickly and correctly.) There were no shenanigans. He's professional, respectful, and trustworthy. He's an excellent attourney. I highly recommend him.

I previously had left a review for Matthew as we hired him for a child custody case. We were very happy with the results that we had so far, but were still going to need his representation at the final trial. I felt VERY pressured to leave reviews from his legal assistant Sara. And when I say very ...pressured; I mean several emails back and forth to leave reviews on at least 3 websites for Matthew. I get it; they want to earn more business. Since we were still working with him and we had no issues thus far; I obliged and left reviews on all of the sites after repeatedly being requested at least 5 or 6 times which included phone calls to my significant other to leave reviews as well. Immediately after we left all the reviews (within two days or so) we were notified from the legal assistant that they wanted to pull out of our case. Which was fine as he mentioned that he would be able to help us if we needed to hire him for the final trial date. I told him that it was going to most likely be a possibility. A few weeks later I email them to discuss and talk about pricing for representation in the final trial and the response was "we are slammed with cases and aren't taking any new ones; good luck." Now if that isn't a "screw you" email I don't know what is. Just be aware of the following before you hire: declarations taken from the legal assistant should be proof read and rewritten if possible by someone proficient in the English language. Mine was written with very bad grammar and it didn't represent the way I articulate myself -you can tell a non-native English speaker didn't write it, but I was pressured to sign it within the next 10 minutes of it being sent to me because it was needed immediately so I signed it. In addition, I didn't want to offend Sara on the poor grammar because I would have had to rewrite it for it to sound like it was written by a mature adult. The legal assistances first languages are not English and their grammar is not up to par with what a legal assistant should have; especially if they are going to be writing up official documents. The legal assistances customer service skills however are great; it just really is a bummer that a repeat client was treated this way- not a great way to attract and retain future business- keep this in mind.