Steven Scott Burkhalter

We have used Scott multiple times and find him to be highly skilled and professional. We originally hired to him to assist with mediation after a very poor experience with another firm. Scott was very knowledgeable with how the local court system works, providing insight into how judges may rule an...d giving us reasonable expectations about the outcome of our case. Unfortunately, following our original mediation, we continued to have problems. Scott has provided advice as necessary and always tried his best to be upfront about costs and expectations. He is a great advocate for achieving balance between fighting for your parental rights vs. fighting a battle that may be winnable but not justified due to the cost.

I retained Scott a few years ago to file for divorce and waited to write this review, knowing my emotions were pretty raw at the time. I had retained him for only $3,000 since my marriage had only been one year and no kids so he said it would be pretty simple. Then, my spouse got violent and left a b...ad scratch on my face so I called the police. She was arrested for domestic violence and I decided to move forward with the divorce. I went to see Scott the next day, and despite my obvious distress and visible injury, he offered no sympathy or even comment on the assault. To the contrary, he was flippant and seemed hurried and distracted. When I asked him for some "do's and do nots" since this was my first divorce, he just shrugged and had basically nothing to say! His main concern was to tell me that the retainer would need to go up to $5,000 since now there was a DV charge against my spouse and it complicated my case somewhat. This seemed logical, so no problem. We filed for divorce that week and he burned through the $5,000 very quickly. Eventually, my spouse and I reconciled so I called Scott to drop the divorce on a Monday morning. He said it was a shame I didn't call on Friday because he claimed he had worked on my case over the weekend and burned through another $1,200... yeah, sure. I will say that he was fairly responsive and got things done in a timely manner in the short time that I retained him. However, I did feel a bit swindled in the end and he came off as a jerk at times.

He sells himself so high and delivers so little as a lawyer. He will first low-ball you making you think that your case can be handled reasonably but at the end you will pay multiple times of the initial estimate. If he gives you an estimate, multiply it by 4 or 5 because that is what you will end ...up paying. One of his shameful tactics is the use of religion to pull in new clients; that's how he got me hooked. Do not be fooled by his religious role playing. For him religion is just a way to get new clients, nothing more nothing less. Another one of his tactics is creating conflicts when there are none; he will then spend endless hours trying to solve them while charging by the hour. But that does not mean the problems he created will be soled in your favor, not at all. Scott Burkhalter always avoids going to court for mainly two reasons. Firstly, he always chooses to solve the problem directly with the opposing counsel. So, instead to going to the court and solving the issue in one day (four to eight hours), he will drag his feet and spend tens of hours (sometime close to one hundred hours) emailing you and the opposing consul which means a much much higher bill for you. The second reason is that his court room performance is laughable. He is incompetent in the court room. Dragging his feet does not hurt you just financially; in my case there were so many “time-sensitive” issues that went unresolved due to this very reason resulting in my children being damaged irreparably in the process. I can write a book with thousands of pages about his tactics, misconducts and crookedness. He is not to be trusted in anyway. He was so dishonest and crooked that got kicked out of his last firm ( Beresford Booth PLLC) six months ago. Now, you have to ask yourself “what has he done to be kicked out of a firm that he worked for many years?” I am preparing to file charges against his with Washington State Bar Association under Titles 1, 2, and 3 to have him disbarred. Failing to disbar him, I will make my mission in life to warn people not to be swindled by him. He is not to be trusted in any way. His days as a lawyer are numbered.

Scott was overall a good lawyer. He was hired to help develop a negotiate a parenting plan. I will say that it took a bit longer than anticipated in the beginning to start the whole process. However, he made up for the lost time in the end and successfully negotiated a plan for me. All in all, a goo...d experience.