Client
Hired Steve Lee to file an emergency order and provide representation for a family law case. He had provided excellent representation for a friend in a criminal case and came with a glowing recommendation. Unfortunately, he failed to deliver. At the time of our emergency order, Steve was also busy defending a court appointed capital murder case. Understandably this dominated his time. He shouldn't have taken our money if he wasn't going to live up to his responsibility to provide competent representation. Prior to the hearing for the emergency order, we only talked with Steve's paralegal. She took plenty of notes and later we learned that Steve never read them. He showed up to the hearing 10 mins before it started, took out a yellow note pad and asked about the case. He didn't have the notes, didn't know the details of the case, obviously hadn't looked at the case, etc. To make matters worse, during the hearing he didn't know what aspects of the Texas Family Code were relevant to our case. The emergency order failed obviously and Steve's office informed us that we had used up the retainer from his half ass work. What work? What's the point of even filing a emergency order if we aren't going to try to win it? Steve is allegedly very good at criminal law; I can't say. What I can say is that he failed to live up to rule 1.1 of the American Bar Association - Competence. He wasn't prepared for our case. He didn't understand what parts of the law applied or what test the court would use. He charged us good money for bad work!