OK. Before we begin, let’s get this out of the way. This is NOT a thread for the general bashing of lawyers as a group or as a profession. This is about bad experiences you’ve had with a specific lawyer or lawyers who were working (or supposed to be working) on your behalf. Please keep this one on topic.
I retained a lawyer for my divorce proceedings at the beginning of the year. My divorce was anticipated to be very straightforward (everything civil, neither side wanting anything from the other, no kids, one piece of property). I had had friends who had done their own divorces and said I should be able to handle it on my own. Nevertheless, I have legal insurance through my workplace, and even though I work in the law business myself as a paralegal, I knew nothing at all about family law. So I figured I’d rather have a professional working on my behalf since it wasn’t going to cost me anything. I decided to go with a fairly young, new lawyer because again, there wasn’t anything complicated about what needed to be done, and I figured I’d get a lot more personal attention from someone new. What could go wrong?
Well, a few things, as it turned out. During our initial meeting, he asked me a series of questions related to our assets and finances which he used to fill out the petition for divorce. Among the questions from him was what my wife’s annual salary was. I gave him the appropriate five-figure answer. After the paperwork had been filed and my wife had been served with a copy, she emailed me to kindly inform me that she’s not quite that wealthy. It seems that the question on the form is actually what her MONTHLY salary was, not her annual salary. Now, I figured this wasn’t a big deal because anyone could make that mistake, and even I hadn’t seen the misstep when I reviewed the paperwork before signing it. On the other hand, this guy is supposed to be familiar with doing divorces, and I’d expect him to know the basic questions on California divorce paperwork. Oh well – I shrugged it off.
A week or two later, I got a letter from my legal insurance company. They told me that I had retained a lawyer prior to my eligible time period, which was January 1, 2010. Therefore, rather than getting my lawyer for free, I was going to have to pay out of my own pocket for all legal services. I was infuriated because I had specifically waited until AFTER the new year to start the divorce process precisely because I knew when my legal insurance would take effect. My first call to the lawyer had been on January 4th. Thinking this was just another attempt by an insurance company to screw me over, I called them to set things straight, armed with proof of phone calls and emails with my attorney. And what did the story turn out to be? My esteemed attorney had improperly filled out the paperwork he’d submitted to the insurance company, inexplicably writing in that I’d retained him in September of 2009. I still don’t know how someone makes that mistake. Anyway, it turns out that by the time I’d called the insurance company, he’d already submitted a correction to his mistake, but I was losing confidence. With, I think, good reason.
Anyway, time goes on, my wife files the appropriate acknowledgment that she’d received the filing, but our intention was that the divorce would go forward as a default, meaning essentially that she wasn’t going to respond to anything. Again, we weren’t contesting anything, and she trusted me to not try to screw her over, so responding was only going to cost money she didn’t have at the time for filing fees. As a May date for a status conference approached, my wife emails me again, asking me what my lawyer’s problem is. It turned out that, without my permission or knowledge, my lawyer had been in contact with my wife, harassing her about filing her response. She’d told him that she didn’t need to file a response and that she wasn’t going to file one, but he continued to insist that it was necessary, and that she basically needed to suck it up because divorces cost money. The fact that he was having any communication at all with my wife without my consent really pissed me off, although I didn’t know whether that was strictly unethical. But it seemed like the communication he was having with her wasn’t even correct! I was on the verge of firing him at that point. But again, our status conference was coming up, so I thought I’d wait.
The lawyer had told me previously that the status conference was no big deal – they just wanted to know where we were in the process. He said I didn’t need to show up – he was going to go there to represent me. However, I work near the courthouse, and I have an interest in the legal process, so I determined on my own that I was going to show up since it was my damned case to begin with, and I wanted to talk to him about the correspondence with my wife. I didn’t tell him I was planning to show. Further, my wife told me that, because she’d lost faith in the process, she was going to show up, as well. Fine.
So May 5th rolls around, and I head to court. I meet my wife there. We head to the appointed courtroom and wait. And wait. And wait. My lawyer is nowhere to be seen. Over an hour after our scheduled time, our case is called by the clerk. My wife and I start to approach when one of the other clerks says, “Wait, you’re Mr. Asimovian? I just got off the phone with your lawyer. He called us to postpone your date because he said he was still waiting for your wife to submit delinquent paperwork. I’ve already taken you off calendar – I didn’t know you were actually here.” After much agonizing and gesturing and explanation, the clerk made it clear to us that based on our circumstances, we – and not the lawyer – were correct in that my wife didn’t need to file any paperwork, and that we were free and clear to proceed under a default. Unfortunately, however, because my lawyer had beaten us by five minutes, there was nothing to be done, and our hearing was postponed for two months. He’d never informed me that he’d had any intention of doing that, of course.
Suffice to say, I fired him that afternoon. Even then, I had to struggle with him to get him to send me a complete copy of my file.
At any rate, do any of you have stories about your own bad lawyer experiences? Maybe I’m the only one. 
