Anne Laurie Westbrook Gould

I hired Anne Gould because of my case. She is dishonest, made me look bad in court and missed important court dates. I hired and my attorney Monique-Gilson was able to represent my case well and fired Anne Gould. Anne Gould sent me a bill of $10000 for two weeks of representation, but she was trying... to take advantage of my pastors at my church community. I told her that I was not satisfied with her representation and told her to pay my ex-husband $500 fee for missing the date. She is the worse lawyer you can have in court. The judge asked her to stop running her mouth. She was unprepared and takes advantage of the situation. She also threatened to put me in jail when I told her she owed me money. She charged me several hours of talking on the phone and Kinkos printing. She is deceiving and a liar. Monique-Gilson is the best attorney you can have. She is competent and never made me go to court again. We were able to finish the case without going back to Court. The Brazilian Consul was present in the hearing and told me that I had the worst lawyer. Anne sent her assistant to court, but I believe Anne is the one coaching. I had several people calling me regarding her bill. I told them what she had done to my case and different people were calling me regarding the bill. She charged me for 3 hours of financial declaration and did not delivered to the court. I am reporting her to the Bar Association, but whoever had a bad experience should report her too. Many of my friends had made important declarations and she failed to deliever to the Court on the Court date. She charges for 5 hours of writting a declarations. When I asked her to get my. police reports, she said it was my job. I did everything on my case. She is very dishonest, she should not be a lawyer because of her the lawyers can have a bad reputation. Now I am looking for a Financial job and they reviewed my credit and she said I owed her $14000. She is incompetent and tries to take advantage of any situation. She uses people who work with her.

Anne Gould should NOT be allowed give legal representation. Her qualifications are examples of the low bar set in our current legal system. Please believe that this is not merely a response from a bitter ex-client who lost a case but it is a summary of my experience with Anne as my attorney. An...ne has no real legal expertise. There were countless times during my case where I relied on Anne's recommendations. One of these recommendations resulted in my actions being found by the court as acting in "bad faith." This also resulted in my children being ripped from Washington State and transported across the country to Arkansas due to a legal technicality that Anne was not aware of. Anne is unprepared. We were in court several times over 7 months and EVERY time we were in court Anne was unable to make reasonable arguments because she spent most of her time rifling through paper notes. Anne would spend several billable hours (according to her) studying our case prior to appearing in court but then had no idea how to respond to any line of questioning. Anne is dishonest. During the time when Anne represented me there were several letters that needed to be written for trial (eg Answers, Motion for appearance, Quick Replys, etc). I personally wrote each and every one of these letters and then emailed them to Anne for legal formatting. She submitted this paperwork word for word as I had written it (even with some grammar and spelling errors). She then CHARGED me over 35 hours of "writing legal responses/paperwork." When I approached Anne with my concerns over her "over billing" she initially agreed to forgive those hours and then later SUED ME for under payment. Anne is a fraud. I fired Anne after 7 months of misrepresentation and over billing. I was upset at her effort and knowledge level of the law so I parted ways with her. After Anne agreed to forgive "overcharged" hours she then SUED ME for over $8k (after I had already paid her over $24k in legal fees). As a footnote to this experience, I hired a different attorney after firing Anne and he was able to get my children back to Washington and in my care in less than 2 months. He knew more about my case (and the law for that matter) in only 2 face-to-face sessions than Anne ever did in 7 months. If you want to throw money away and have your life destroyed stick with Anne. She will be perfect for you.