Valerie Avrin

The Summary: My wife and I utilized the services of Valerie Avrin as our attorney for the sale of our home in 2015. Service: Rating: 1 out of 5 First, when we used Valerie as our closing attorney, we did NOT work directly with Valerie. We were assigned to a paralegal who took care of our clos...ing. I would not have thought this was bad, except for the fact that our paralegal lacked the general experience and knowledge to handle our closing properly. We experienced more errors and oversights from this office that we could have ever imagined. The Knowledge: Rating: 1 out of 5 The lack of knowledge by Valerie and her staff regarding our specific closing is really where most of our problems occurred. Our paralegal didn't know much, and what she did know was either wrong or not explained to us properly. Speaking with Valerie wasn't much better. Valerie spoke in general legal terms and almost never regarding our specific closing. She gave us incorrect information more than once, and caused numerous problems during the closing. The Responsiveness: Rating: 3.5 out of 5 The one area in which I have to give some credit is the responsiveness of the office. Our paralegal responded to emails very quickly, usually within a few hours. The only thing that could have made our experience worse would have been if we had to wait days for responses/replies from the office. But, luckily that didn't happen. I actually would have rated their responsiveness higher if Valerie wasn't so difficult to get a hold of. There were many times that our paralegal just didn't know the answer to a question, or worse yet, gave us incorrect or conflicting information. It was at these times in which we asked to speak with Valerie. Unfortunately, Valerie was always "on a conference call" or "in a closing." We would wait a day or two before having to follow-up again. It was only after our follow-up would we receive a call back from Valerie. The Professionalism: Rating: 1.5 out of 5 Professionalism was essentially non-existent with this office. The emails we received were short and most times very difficult to interpret. We rarely received an explanation for anything that was requested or happening, and often major things were just overlooked. For example, our paralegal forwarded us the settlement sheet, which was prepared by the buyer's attorney, which shows all the financials for the sale. We found numerous mistakes that would have resulted in us losing thousands of dollars. When I asked our paralegal about the errors, she replied, "I didn't look at it, I just forwarded it directly to you." I'm sorry, but isn't my lawyer (or paralegal who is employed to do all my lawyer's work for them) supposed to ensure accuracy in the documents they send to me (that is rhetorical, obviously)? Finally, the lack of professionalism came to the fore