I have mixed rating for my lawyers. I finished my divorce in the holiday season of 2022. It took about 2 years. It was full on horror movie "this is going to kill me" dark times until the last month. Then things just magically panned out. I paid a bit over $32k in legal fees.

I got an amazing settlement. All the consults predicted doom and gloom and shot down every idea I had. They were randoms from an internet search. I didn't know what to do and talked to friends and family. A friend recommended my actual lawyer. And that lawyer was the only one willing to put up a fight. I was impressed during the consult. But she (female lawyer) quickly turned to doom and gloom once she cashed the retainer check.

There were times that I felt she was doing absolutely nothing other than charging me $2000 a month. I wanted to switch lawyers. But my family said it'd cost a fortune without any guarantee of results. That made sense to me. So I kept her.

My stbxw never came to the table within the two years. So most of my divorce was stalled nothing. We went all the way to the cliff of a trial. Most of that terrific settlement was my wife shooting herself in the foot. So, even though I'm really happy with the outcome, it's a strange collection of coincidences unrelated to my lawyer. It's all about my ex's choice of vitriol over common sense.

My primary lawyer owed me a + $2000 refund. She found a way to add more fees. I got a refund check for $250. The $1750 was hand waved away when she sent a very impressive collection of binders and maybe a couple of reams of paper via snail mail. It was a testament that she actually did some work. But then again, I had generated most of that paperwork myself. I delivered it in electronic format. And there was really no reason to print it out. Most of it wasn't even filed with the court.

There were signs that not much work was done. My lawyer didn't review the paperwork at all. I made a bunch of very serious mistakes, something a CPA would blush over missing. And it's pretty clear she didn't catch those. I was pretty depressed. I was a bit paralyzed actually. And like an idiot, I listed 401k PLAN LITERATURE as actual DC plans. They were valued in the billions. Ummmm. Luckily I listed a $15b billion DC savings as $15k. So the end result wasn't that big of a deal.

I had a second QDRO lawyer. She owes me some type of refund. It took a year to do the QDROs mainly because my ex wife is very angry and stalled again. The QDRO lawyer, another female, didn't seem to like me very much. Maybe she thought the settlement was unfair. Her answers were terse and a bit heated. I grumbled about my ex's slow responses and the QDRO lawyer gave me an earful. She was a necessary intermediary because of contention but favored my ex. I'm sure the very delayed refund is driven by a bit of disdain.

All in all, I'd give my primary lawyer a B+. That last milked refund is the only reason I'm not singing her praise all over the internet. The QDRO lawyer gets a B. Still waiting on that refund.

It'd probably be an F and a D had I not been riding cloud nine just knowing it's all over.