Dustin Cooper

Review of Smith Strong, PLC

I would advise against using Smith Strong, based o...

I would advise against using Smith Strong, based on my experience. I used them to open a custody case for me in the beginning of 2016.

To begin, I was given very positive encouragement as to the strength of my case by the attorney assigned to represent me in this matter. This advice would end up ruining me, financially speaking, for a time. My attorney failed to realize that the way the court measures income was different than the third party arbitration entity that had arbitrated our initial custody agreement. This resulted in my support going from 750/m plus half of daycare costs to an astounding 2300/m. She did not inform me of this until we were coming upon the final hearing. It was too late. This was information I had needed before deciding to ever open the case. She had my income from the very beginning. Furthermore, during this same time they charged me over 20k+ for a single pretrial hearing, a short and unsuccessful arbitration hearing, and a final hearing. Not to mention she told me that if I wanted to do the divorce as well, then that would be a whole other matter as the two could not be done together. This was flat out false. My current attorney, Scott Cardani of Bowen Ten Cardani, filed both matters (support/custody and divorce) together in the circuit court of chesterfield county and they were appropriately handled as such.

I visited countless law offices such as Cravens & Knoll, Bowen Ten Cardani, and others. Each firm guaranteed me this was an a ridiculous amount to pay for a single custody and support matter. This would end up playing out.

I have now had multiple custody, support, and divorce hearings and I have just reached half of what they charged me for the one pretrial, arbitration, and final hearing on custody and support (10 thousand). Not to mention that my situation has improved. I pay less child support and divorced. All for half of what they charged me for one set of hearings on custody and support.

I will state that in speaking with the owner of the firm, he did state that mistakes were made and refunded me just over two thousand dollars. However, this does not make up for the over seventeen thousand I still paid them as well as my child support jumping to over half of my take home pay.

I do not like to leave bad reviews and this review is coming a couple years after my dealings with them. But I recently ran into a young woman who was being represented by this firm and she told me a very similar experience. Therefore, after a lot of thought, I have decided to write this review. I hope it helps and if anyone would like more information for their own decision making process, you can private message me and I will be more than willing to discuss it.