I hired Sara McDwyer to provide legal and procedural advice while I represented myself in my divorce. This is called "limited representation." This is a review of the good, the bad, and the ugly aspects of her performance as my legal adviser.
First, the good part. Sara is very personable and sympathetic. She is easy to talk to and was supportive of me during a trying time. She has practiced law for over 30 years so she does know the law and legal procedure. She was able to explain both to me and to help me with strategy. She was reliable when we had made a telephone appointment -- she called when she said she would.
Now, for the not so good parts. Sara is a sole practitioner with no administrative support. An assistant might have been able to keep her on track and provide much needed communication with me. It was difficult to reach her by phone. She did not answer her phone, preferring instead that I leave a message so she could get back to me when it was convenient for her. I never knew what her schedule was or when she would return my call, and there was no assistant to tell me. I did not know if she would get back to me that day or 2 days from then. A couple of calls went completely unanswered. This was inconvenient to say the least! She was inconsistent in returning emails, too. Sometimes the reply was timely and other times I waited several days. Sometimes she did not respond to my questions, which caused unnecessary delays as I had to repeat the cumbersome communications loop to get an answer. Sometimes she completely ignored my requests, as she did when I asked her to file a change of address with the court and to have the court send me file stamped copies of the final judgment at my new address.
Another problem I had is that Sara did not seem to know much about tracing co-mingled assets to establish separate property rights. This was an important aspect of my divorce, and I ended up having to find my own coach to show me how to do the tracing because the two people Sara came up with were useless. it's hard to understand that an attorney who has been practicing for 30 years would know so little about this important area of divorce law and not know of anyone who could help me. If I had not found someone on my own, the final settlement would have been very different!
And now for the ugly part. She charged me more than twice what she estimated the cost of writing the Marital Settlement Agreement would be. You would think that after 30 years of family law practice she would already have a boilerplate document which she could tailor to my situation (which was not at all unique or complicated). Instead, she said she wrote one from scratch, costing me twice her estimate. It is probably the same document she will charge you for, too. Next, she announced, rather than asked, that she was going to take over the last phase of the divorce, which was simply to gather 2 signatures, fill out two easy forms and file the final packet with the court. I never asked her to do this, and since I knew how to fill out the forms and file the documents, it was entirely unnecessary for her to do this step. She hijacked the process by not filing my change of address with the court, as I had asked her to, and instructing the court to deal exclusively with her, not me, for the remainder of the case. That meant the court sent MY final divorce judgment to HER. In addition, it took her 23 days to gather 2 signatures and submit this simple packet to the court. I was frantic because I needed the decree to be able to put my house on the market and the delays she caused were really problematic. Did she care? Not a bit. Of course, she charged me at $400 per hour for what was essentially clerical work. When I complained about the long delay in gathering 2 signatures and submitting the filing, she sent me an email with a load of self-serving BS about red tape that was completely immaterial. There was no red tape problem, just her inattention. All this nonsense was so outrageous, I fired her. Beware! Do not let your attorney hijack your case if you intend to be your own attorney. I had no clue that she would do this, and if I had, I would not have hired her in the first place.
I leave it to you to decide whether you want to hire someone who does things like this. She has strengths, but communication can be slow and unpredictable. Unaccountably, she took control at the end of the case so she could provide "supervision" of the case (read: bill for unnecessary "work".) It turns out that the court processed my final judgment in a matter of a few days, once they got the paperwork, so there was nothing to "supervise". If you are acting as your own attorney, KEEP CONTROL OF THE PROCESS or you will be at the mercy of her timing and get billed for it, which may not please you. read more