David Scott Heier

Overall I won my case and was happy with my outcome. The good\great: He is great at answering his phone and emails. Most of the time he picks up on the first or second ring and is available right away. He knows the law very well. Every single thing he told me was true and accurate regarding t...he law and how the divorce process works. He was good at communicating with opposing counsel. Listened to my opinions and offered solid advice to whether they were feasible options. The billing was fair and transparent. I spent 60% less on legal fees than my ex and most everything went in my favor. The not as good: I felt as though he was unprepared each time we went to court. I was constantly going through all the details in the 5 minutes before our appearances. I felt as though I was driving most of the progress and was the one doing the leg work with him being the messenger more than my representative. Overall I had a fine experience. For a simple divorce with not a lot of complications he was effective.

I hired David to be my attorney in May 2016 for the amount of $5,000.00 paid to him. At this time he was to represent me in my divorce and help with custody and the money my husband owed to me. In the beginning David seemed distracted and not completely up for the job, but I had paid him and decided... to give him a chance. At one court date back in October he seemed very confident and told me that the case was going to trial and I needed to give him another $6,000 to finish up through trial. His optimism that I would be getting more than what I even asked for and that there shouldn't be a problem getting residential custody of my girls I paid him. Later on he proved to be completely incompetent and revoked his previous assumption that I would be getting custody or even the money that was supposed to be proven to be mine. The last straw(s) were him not telling me that the court date had been changed and it ended up being the day of my Gramma's funeral. He said he would take care of it and not to worry and go to the funeral. Later after court he called to tell me that I will NOT be getting residential custody of my kids and that I should just let it go and focus on the money part of it. He said that I "needed to be realistic and that I have emotional issues" after I started crying that he wasn't doing his job. Then, two days later I found out from my ex that David didn't even show up to court that day and they had to phone him to conference him in! He never told me he wasn't going to go and that the decision made that day was probably because I didn't have anyone there to fight my side. So I fired him assuming I would get most if not all of the $6,000 I had given him a month ago and could hire a new attorney. He refuses to give me any money back and says I owed him for past expenses. I NEVER ever received a bill for anything. It says in the contract that he will provide me with an itemized statement of charges not less than every 60 days. I never got one. Plus he had told me the $6,000 was to prepare for and go to trial set in February. David never advised me that the children would have their own attorney, and that I would need to speak to her, so meeting her for the first time during a court date was a surprise for me. An even bigger surprise was that she had been speaking with my ex-husband right along and never contacted me because she didn't get permission from David to do so. The entire time she was in the picture and I was unaware she was only hearing the lies my ex was spewing about me and never followed up to hear my side. Finally, after trying to contact her myself she called me 3 days before the NEXT court date and spoke with me for 10 minutes. I was able to disprove a few allegations my husband was making, but that didn't seem good enough for judgement were made before ever even seeing me. I finally demanded an itemized statement of charges because he said he wasn't going to give me my money back and when I picked it up from his office saw that he was charging me for every phone call, every email and $250 ONE way to court, so $500 a trip to court plus court time. The phone calls, I would call him to ask what time court was and he would tell me he didn't know and would call the court to find out and call me back. Then charge me for 3 phone calls at 10 min each. And his retainer I signed said in increments of min 6 minutes. It does not say amount of money per mile or amount of time spent reading emails. He took $11,000 of my money, didn't follow through with anything, didn't let me know about important changes in court appearances, added law guardians, didn't show up to a court date, never sent me a bill, overcharged for just about everything, told me the last $6,000 was for trial, and was not adequately representing me in any way. He is thoughtless and unprofessional and took advantage of an emotional mother going though the hardest point in her life fighting for her children.