Colbert & Associates

Very bad experience. She passed me off to her most jr person. I found out later that he had not even passed the AK bar exam until after he started working on my behalf. I'd get charged for conversations with him and then him to her and then I'd end up ultimately having to discuss with her. It basically was me being double billed. I kept telling her that I had hired HER! She never realized what my end goal was even though I clearly told her. Her Jr guy would tell me to do something. I'd do it. Then she'd tell me I never should have done it. She sent me weird bills even after we had ended our contract. I refused to pay it. I had to file in court to terminate her. Her paralegal made mistakes. Her Jr guy was chastised by the judge for not blacking out sensitive information about my son on court paperwork. I was tempted to file a complaint against her but decided to just move on with my life. Even still however I have a bitter taste in my mouth from the experience with her.

BEWARE - unethical practice!!! This review is based on the experience my sister had with Ms. Colbert and the rest of staff in her practice. Ms. Colbert spent months just sitting on my sister's case, charging enormous fees for reading emails (from my sister and other parties involved, and, most of the time, not responding to any of them). She avoided phone conversations and face-to-face interactions, except the first meeting, when initial fees were collected. When child custody investigative report came out, she just sat on it. She continued to read my sister's emails urging her to action, yet took none. She refused to provide copies of communication pertaining to the case and kept my sister unaware of the status of her case. She lied that the opposition refused to cooperate, while it was later found out (through reviewing case files) she ignored the opposition lawyer just as she ignored her client (my sister)! Ms. Colbert and her assistant had totally mishandled a vacation arrangement request my sister sent to Ms. Colbert well in advance of travel date, causing my sister to cancel the long planned trip with her child. They then tried to cover up that fiasco with lies, while charging a good sum of money for it all. When my sister and I (I came for emotional support) finally showed up at their office demanding immediate release of ALL FILES pertaining to the case, we were treated with obvious hostility. They first tried to send us off, promising to fulfill the request later. When we insisted that we wouldn't leave until we have the files, Ms. Colbert made us wait in the lobby, for about half hour, while she drafted her resignation letter. She never showed her face. She, clearly, realized she was about to get fired. Ms. Colbert and her office have terribly mishandled my sister's case. The office is very creative at slowing down the process, coming up with extra charges and rounding up each minute to six. My sister got literally charged tens of thousands for things like (1) two people reading same email (neither answering that email), (2) for their "internal meetings" regarding the case (meetings that led nowhere), (3) for correcting their many mistakes (you literally have to review everything very carefully, esp. their invoices, which is one reason why they don't keep you in the loop - so you would have less grounds for invoice disputes) and more. "Scam company" are excatly the words that come to my mind, similar to what another reviewer (on Yelp) wrote back in 2011. Except their fees almost doubled since then - a whooping $385/hr, plus a $5K retainer and a $2.5k revolving "cushion" - another creative (or born out of necessity) charge, just in case you refuse to pay a bill that you are disputing. They, delay, manipulate, threaten, bully and lie (!!!) while continuing to charge. It is bewildering how they still remain in business, given that the experiences of so many clients have been equally horrible (many, many mishandled cases)! My sister hired another lawyer and her only regret was not firing Ms. Colbert any sooner. Mishandled case, months of wasted time and thousands of wasted dollars.

Worst law practice in town. Had a junior member of the team who completely mishandled my case. His supervisor was no help in trying to correct the mistakes made. Beware, don t waste your time or money.

We used Mendel Colbert & Associates to help facilitate an adoption with a birthmother in Alaska. They were very responsive until we paid our retainer -- after that, everything was funneled through the attorney's paralegal, who was incredibly difficult to reach. We would email 3 or 4 times, and then finally call her once or twice, before we would get a response. We received no guidance about how to handle the adoption situation, and when we arrived in AK, there was no one to help us. My husband caught errors on the paperwork twice, and we had to find a place to reprint the paperwork each time. Additionally, no one from Mendel Colbert & Associates came to help us! We had to present the paperwork to the birthmother ourselves, find a notary ourselves, and deal with the birth parents and the hospital staff ourselves. When the birthmother put false information on the paperwork, we had to figure that out ourselves, too. The final revocation of adoption paperwork was signed on March 31, and it took Mendel Colbert & Associates 6 weeks to refund the unused portion of our retainer -- and only after we'd requested it 4 times, and finally got our personal attorney involved. I also saw, on the itemized bill, that we got charged for the corrections that they had to make due to their errors! If this wasn't the only attorney in the state who could handle interstate adoptions (at least, according to our agency), we would have dropped them immediately. I would strongly caution anyone against using this law firm, unless you like being blown off, given paperwork with multiple errors, and doing most of the work yourself. Worst experience!!!

I hired Ms Mendel, and she worked on the case for a while. She made initial progress, but then had me hire her colleagues to support my case and then she passed me to a junior attorney, who made a lot of mistakes. Staff in the office made several errors as well. They did not catch simple things, like my ex-wife using two year old income with current deductions to attempt to reduce her child support, something that my simple cross-referencing uncovered. I then had to pay them again to update the child support affidavit. In mediation, I went the opposite direction that the junior attorney wanted me to go, and after getting the result I wanted, the junior attorney said: you can chalk that up to bad lawyer advice. The combined value of these two things was over $100k. They were adept at figuring out ways to slow the process down, delaying, and charging high fees. They would threaten to quit when I caught their errors or debated for different strategies, and no matter the delay or error, they would charge and charge and charge.

Very unethical and full of lies. I would not hire this piece of work again