Shelley L. Brandt

Shelley promised- with no doubt- results that she did not even come close to delivering. I wouldn’t recommend her to anyone- except an opposing party. She did not listen to my desires, and did no footwork. Her assistant Shannon is kind and caring- which was refreshing after conversations with Shelly....

If Shelley Brandt decides you are somehow worthy of her effort, she will fight for you. If not (and the reviews here suggest there are many of us deemed not worth her efforts) she will take (and take) your money and drag the case out, getting you nothing in return. She did not fight for my best inter...ests in mediation and, in fact, missed a $20,000 discrepancy in my ex's asset reporting. After paying approximately $8,000 for this poor service, I now have to hire another attorney and take the case to court to try and resolve it. Hiring Shelley was the second biggest mistake of my life.

I quickly learned that she was billing me every time she looked at an email, so I started gathering my questions together for one large email instead of many smaller ones. Once I sent several questions and then remembered one more important question. She responded to that last email separately with... a one word response, but billed me for an entire email. She would wait until the last minute to tell me of the information I needed to obtain when she should have known months earlier that we would eventually need some of my military retirement records. She would tell me that I was not required at a certain court hearing and then call me the night before and tell me my presence was required, making me miss work. She would send me a 50 page legal document prepared by the other side, instruct me to read it, and sign it if I agreed, with no input on if it was a good document to sign or not. I told her there was a reason I hired a lawyer and that included some advice on documents printed in legalese, but she just called me rude and hung up, having her assistant call me back. Her younger sister, assistant, is very kind and helpful, but if you want any legal assistance, do someplace else. I could have obtained the same results had I went in with no lawyer at all. Stay away from this woman as she is worthless as an attorney.

Shelley Brandt is not interested in anything other than the almighty dollar. She will go on the offensive with opposing counsel by making crazy assertions based on her selective memory and not actual facts. She will not spend the time doing her research prior to firing off nasty letters to ensure w...hat she says is correct. She will resort to all kinds of low brow tactics to destroy any chance of reasonable negotiations between parties, and once she is found out to be less (much less) than honest, she simply withdraws from the case leaving her clients high and dry. Of course, this is all her strategy to increase her billable hours. Her paralegal, Rae, is as rude as they come and gets very defensive when one points out her numerous typos and contradictions in the declarations she types up. Of course Brandt tries to charge for the corrections made by her staff. There are much better family law attorneys in Thurston County-why waste your time and money on someone that doesn't care about anything other than herself?

Shelley Brandt bled more than $20,000 from me only to withdraw three days prior to the final decree. With me being out of state this certainly proved to be detrimental to a positive outcome of my divorce. It required me to find another lawyer on very short notice and prolonged the proceedings for ma...ny more months while the new attorney sorted everything out. My divorce should have been very simple as we didn't have any bills, one house and a few investment accounts to divide up, but she managed to draw it out for nearly two years. I had a mediation meeting in March 2013---July 2013 after multiple inquires of what the hold up was in finalizing the divorce she quit. Ms Brandt does NOT like her clients to ask her questions. If you are not well versed in Family Law of Washington, you do not want to have her as your "legal counsel". She will develop and pursue her own agenda whether in your best interest or not. I spent nearly two very frustrating years and more than $20,000 on Shelly Brandt's "services" and got absolutely nothing in return. If you want a lawyer that will represent your best interest in the courtroom Shelley Brandt is not that lawyer.