Overbilled!
I would not recommend Samantha Heath. I chose Samantha based on her AVVO rating, all of her honors and awards, and years of experience. However, I was extremely disappointed in the representation that I received from her and her team.
I was informed that a divorce without minor children should take 3-5 months and it should be in the $5000-$10,000 range if it doesn’t go to trial. Five months after hiring Samantha, not only was I still not divorced, but she had not drafted any settlement proposals or even begun division of assets. When I questioned the timing, she insisted that the divorce was on track and that the timing was very typical.
Samantha had billed me over $8500 while my husband had been billed just under $3000 from his attorney for just about the same number of hours worked on the case. The majority of my husband’s work was handled by his lawyer’s assistant or paralegal while almost all of the work for my case (with the exception of ½ an hour) was billed at Samantha’s rate of $395 including all of the administrative work and her responses to my emails questioning why the divorce is taking so long. See attached bills. I also never received any bill until after the retainer fee was used up and she was billing for more money. She claimed that I was not set up to receive them. I had asked Samantha to revisit her billing rate, but she told me that the fees that I had been billed are appropriate and reflect the complexity of my case and the expertise provided and that her hourly rate is commensurate with her over 30 years of experience in family law.
Communication was also very poor with Samantha and things were very sloppy. She did not explain things very well and in some cases gave conflicting advice which required additional emails for clarification. Forms were received with misspelled information, as well as misinformation. I could go on with other issues, but these are the most significant.
