Rashelle Fetty handled my divorce. Some of the issues I have are with her, some with the firm and…read moretheir practices. The TL;DR version is: slow, sloppy, non-standard (read, excessively expensive) billing practices.
When I first had my consultation I made it EXTREMELY clear that for safety reasons I was not ready to file yet, I was dealing with timing issues for safely extricating myself from my situation without the kids being disrupted any more than necessary.
She filed right away. I didn't find out about it until we were selling the house (for other reasons) and the divorce case showed up on some of the documentation regarding potential liens on the house. Thank goodness my ex was not the type to actually read anything that was sent to him or he would have found out and he would have yanked the kids out of school and given me all sorts of trouble trying to get the house sold. After I complained they took action to non-suit the matter and took the related charges off my bill. So it got resolved and thank goodness no real harm came of it, but it could have been catastrophically bad if my ex were violent (he isn't) and a divorce attorney should know better.
Second issue was how she made a big deal about the difference in cost for a 'non-contested' vs. 'contested' divorce. When we discussed verbally, the implication was that there was a flat $2000 fee for a non-contested divorce but if it becomes contested, it goes hourly. This actually is not what the contract they give you to sign says. The contract uses confusing language (and I'm no dummy) but once I sorted it out it actually means that if it's non-contested they'll take $2000 from you up front and bill against that til it's gone, then charge you again if they aren't done. If it's contested, they won't bill against your retainer but will keep charging monthly. But either way, you end up paying the same amount, just with less hung up in the retainer. It was my bad that I didn't call her on it when I got the contract but she did a poor job of explaining it.
I never felt like I was a priority, emails always took several days to be replied to. This implies to me she is overbooked.
The next issue, which is my bad for allowing in the first place and not just finding a new attorney after my consult but I was hurting and just couldn't emotionally deal with additional strain, is that they bill in 15 minute increments, not the 6 minute increments that are standard in the industry. (I've known a lot of attorneys and paralegals and I wrote legal software for years, so I'm familiar with these things). This means if your attorney sends a one line reply to an email saying "yes, show up at the courthouse at noon on Monday" she will bill you for 15 minutes of time at $300/hr, not for 6 minutes of time at $300. This leads to a huge discrepancy in how much you actually end up paying. There were a lot of expensive one line emails that I waited several days to receive and paid $75 a pop for.
Next, the work on the decree was sloppy. I laid out in very clear written terms what the arrangements needed to be, and they were written up wrong several times. I paid a lot for them to be fixed which chapped since my instructions were correct initially, they just weren't implemented properly. (I am not quibbling about times that the actual content changed, which did happen a couple times, but when what I asked for wasn't done properly). When I build software I make sure what I build meets the requirements given before I say it is done. I expect someone I'm paying $300/hr for to do the same.
Lastly, it took several calls and emails to get someone in accounting to respond about returning of my retainer (which finally came today, three and a half months after the matter settled and two months after they said they put the file in offsite storage, finally freeing me to write this review). Their excuse for why they keep it so long is "just in case they have to do more" but really is it that hard to collect a new retainer if that's necessary? They really just got a free loan.
So while eventually my matter was settled successfully, and I don't doubt Rashelle's legal knowledge, there were a lot more roadbumps and charges along the way than there should have been, and I encourage anyone reading this to not support a firm that charges in 15 minute increments.
