Douglas Cannon Smith

I hired Mr. Smith for my divorce. I did get everything I asked for. So the reason for the bad review is this. you have your initial consultation and he promises a timeline and a price. You bring the retainer the next day and the timeline just got doubled by his assistant but they don't tell you til a...fter you hand over the money. Then it runs over budget. if the case goes exactly as planned with only 4 maybe 5 hours of court time how do you not forsee that? I paid the 80 dollar consultation fee which was supposed to be deducted from the retainer which it wasn't. You will never get a response from him even if he tells you to contact him with any questions. the front office is very rude and also has trouble making contact with clients and are very condescending. last thing was after the case was done and I got custody of my son the paperwork was never sent to the attorney general. I have paid an extra month of child support to my ex wife and my son lives with me because they didn't send the paperwork. ofcourse it was blamed on the court but since it was an attorney general case the court said my lawyer was supposed to send it in. I didn't expect to lose an extra 800 dollars after I paid out all that money for my lawyer.

Everytime I called to speak to Mr. Smith about my child support case he was always so busy, never there, or with other clients at court. How busy can he be everyday? He was payed to answer questions with knowledge and truth, instead he never returned our calls and his emails were not informative. His... emails just reinstated what was already covered in the court documents I received in the mail. I also believe he never asnwer the questions in person because he had no clue and needed the extra time to research the basic questions I had. He always overcharged to show up 5 minutes before court without having a meeting with me to discuss any issues or answer any questions I may have had. I wouldnt recommened him to anyone. The office has very poor customer service, his legal assistant rarely answers the phone, it's difficult to get an appointment, and once you do get an appointment Mr. Smith will tell you he will call you to follow up on paperwork which he never does. NO ONE ever returns phone calls. Is that too much to ask. Simply put, I received subpar leagal service from an inept lawyer! Keep looking around, because his he completely got ran over in court by a plantiff with no legal representation. Finally, after the case was over and he only charged me for $800.00 of legal service. I got a final bill for $1200 exactly to take every penny of the retainer.