Andrea M Poplawski

Met at initial consultation and was impressed with her aggressive attitude and knowledge, and was convinced that I should hire her to help with my child custody/domestic violence case. She seemed to have no sympathy at all for the father of my child, and would do whatever it took to win. This case se...emed to take a long time just to commence. The thousands of dollars I had in retainer had vanished after several weeks, after seeing little results, and the billing was questionable. I had no idea what was going on with my case for weeks, and correspondence was near impossible. The only person I could get a hold of to ask questions about my case was her paralegal. But all of this aside, the thing that disappointed me the most was after having spend thousands of dollars on this case, and not knowing what was being pursued, on our first court hearing together after meeting with her two times and after having spent thousands of dollars on the case, Andrea did not even recognize her own client. She was supposed to meet me about ten minutes before the hearing to meet with me and go over the case and she was late and didn't show until right as court was in session with another families case. She came into the room and was looking all over and didn't even recognize me when I was sitting in the back looking right at her. Until our case was called, she had not gone over the case with me as promised, and did not even recognize me in the courtroom. Very disappointing. My ex then asked for a continuance, she was out the door, and again did not hear from her or her paralegal without having to consistently email the paralegal. What a waste of money, with little results or consideration.

I will state first that everyone has a different situation and a different outcome on the case at hand, but my experience with Andrea was the worst experience I have ever had with an attorney. I was given her name, and was told that she was a bulldog in the courtroom. Well was I disappointed. She was... not an advocate for me or my daughter. Her office assistant was the only one I could ever speak to. Court hearing would be sprung at the last minute. Now, I have a temporary order in place from 2009 prior to teaming with Andrea, we went in front of a commissioner in 2011 to argue that my child’s father is incompetent of caring for a child let alone a special needs child, and should have limited visitation. Or so I thought. Was any of this information shared to the commissioner, no! The commissioner granted every other weekend visit and every other Tuesday Thursday visits (More than what he had before). My child is in school during the week (a private school for small children with special needs), and the court commissioner stated that it was okay for the child to miss school. Did my attorney do anything for my child, stand up and make an objection. Absolutely not. When I asked if we could object to the commissioner ruling she stated yes, and we could have another court appearance. So we did get one on the books. Andrea asked me to have a letter written from my child’s teacher, which I had done. I work from 7-4:30 so my child is taken to school around seven and then her father’s visitation starts at 9. The teacher saw this visitation schedule as an inconvenience and problematic to her and the rest of her students. This was a place of business, and place of learning and to have someone come in and interrupt class to have one child leave when her father arrives, was not acceptable to ask a teacher to do. So there we were sitting in front of the judge. My ex’s attorney ripped her to pieces, since he was an advocate for his client. Mine on the other hand, used all 15 minutes to talk about a comma in the residential schedule. Tell me how debating about a comma would win my case? Obviously by the outcome, it did not. The letter was not used, no talk was brought up about how this is a burden to the school. I walked out of the courtroom, frustrated, upset and sicken with Andrea, because after all you hire an attorney to represent yourself to be an advocate for you and Andrea has failed at both of those. As for her fees, they were what you would expect, but I do believe a bit unfair since she wasted a lot of my money over a comma. Money is money, you can always make more, but Andrea cost me much more the than money, something more important to me than money will ever be and that is the lost time with my daughter, the pressure and concern of her being away from me, with someone who hasn’t a clue on how to be a parent. And lost time being away from her education. In my opinion Andrea is incapable of doing the job and doing it well. I can’t speak on behalf of Mr., Harrington, but as for Andrea, I would never recommend you to her, no matter what law office she may work for.