I agree about good lawyers out there. I have a couple in my family, and they are the most upstanding, honest, caring people I know!

But I hired one locally that wasn't worth a penny! I wound up doing most of everything myself or I would have never got my divorce!

I have a wonderful lawyer/friend also.....Stacy

Some of our Clients become like family. You go through so much with them. You are their confidant and often the counselor.

I have to say one of our good friends now, started out as a Client. She made "Bad" choices in Men. We got her 3 divorces. We told her she can't get married anymore.

Gayle

99% of lawyers give the rest of them a bad name.

I'm married to a good lawyer but in all honesty, I feel like he's a rare one. He's spent his career DEFENDING people/businesses that are under attack from the legal sharks.

I've also engaged the services of a good lawyer and was very impressed with his innate goodness.

However, way too many lawyers are out after the fast buck and *delight* in suing some company or corporation to hell and back, just for the dollars.

Any company that ever had anything to do with asbestos has now been sued out of business. And look at the Virginia Tech horror. Yes, it's horrible that those students perished, but why did the lawyers start suing the college?

And then, the college turns to Virginia taxpayers to pay off the claims? It's all a puzzle to me.

Rose

I've had both good and bad ones. A good one for my divorce, and a bad one for my arm injury at work.
Leslie

DS is due to graduate from law school next month. He is a good one and became a lawyer so he could help people suffering from discrimination. He has to pay off his school loans, and they are big, but then he can afford to go to the non profit firms. In the meantime, he wants to do the pro bono work at his firm as much as possible. He used the records of the firms' pro bono cases to select which firms he would interview.

Hey, glad to hear something positive about Lawyers. My son is an Attorney.

Yeppers....I work with a bunch of them, and there is not a one in the group that would not give you the shirt off their back. You just hear the most about the bad ones...can we talk about the newsmedia?????? :^)

I agree - the bad ones give all of them a bad name. Thanks from my DD!! LOL

My hubs is another of the "good ones." He's the most ethical person I know, and one of the most brilliant, too.

Some people love to bad-mouth lawyers but they are also the first ones to get one when they need one and are thrilled when their lawyer is sharp and a real smart cookie. I have never had a bad experience with one, although my brother got taken for a couple thousand dollars by a female lawyer who promised to do something for him and did nothing but keep his money.

Some of our friends are lawyers and it's great to know that I can call them and ask a question or get advice. And if I need them to really help me with a problem, they are so willing to act on our behalf, so I have no problems with lawyers, I like 'em! They provide a great service. And one of our best customers at work is a lawyer and a judge and he's just the neatest guy. So the stereotype is busted as far as I'm concerned.

And they know ALL of the Lawyer Jokes. They tell them more than the average person.

Gayle

And then there are the "BAD" lawyers who are so named because they lost the case for the person who hired them. If they had won, they would have been "GOOD" lawyers.

Sue

Azzalea, would you mind telling us what happened to the SIL? I sure hope she got what was coming to her. So sad when someone has to do this to anyone..

It's a really, really long story.

And not really over yet.

Thanks to the hard work of our forensic accountant, we had positive proof that SIL, her husband and another brother had taken money that they shouldn't have, and used it for their own benefit rather than MIL's.

The prosecutor's office was involved at one point and wanted to prosecute SIL. Now, she definitely committed a criminal act, and part of me would have been more than happy to see her end up paying for that--but there was another part of me.... Our fathers were best friends as kids. I grew up knowing this family, thinking of them almost as cousins, and ended up marrying the BEST one of them. SIL has been my 'sister' since she was in 8th grade. Our daughters used to refer to themselves as "best cousins, best friends". How do you sit back and send someone you've been friends with for over 3 decades to jail? I took a stand and asked that the prosecutor drop the case. I know--there was good reason to go ahead, but I just couldn't do it.

Now, obviously, someone who would steal like that, doesn't have enough to their name to return what they took, right? They spent every penny, near as I can tell. Well, the lawyers got together and came up with a decent solution. The 'outlaws' had been 'caring' for MIL--and getting paid to do so (there's a formula for that by law). So they had to agree to continue to care for MIL, without pay--for YEARS. Also, because they'd already claimed their inheritance, so to speak, if MIL dies leaving anything, they get almost nothing, with the lion's share of the estate going to my husband and his one brother that wasn't involved in the thefts.

Now, fact is, they've had to 'repay' only a pittance of what they took. And there's every chance that what little is left in MIL's name will be used for her care--which is as it should be. Still, the thieves have pretty much had to admit what they did, and they know that we have proof in black and white. They've become very quiet.

There's another thing we feel good about. My FIL died under very odd circumstances. I'm not saying they did anything to cause that--but there are questions, not the least of which involves the fact that they had him quickly cremated (this was a man who was adamant about NOT wanting to be cremated). Anyway, in the beginning of this journey, they were not getting MIL the medical care she deserved, and I feared that they were trying to make sure she wouldn't last too long. As things stand now, after the agreement our lawyer forged--and not to get into all the details of the situation--they're better off keeping her alive as long as possible. I truly believe that not only did we conserve some of her money, but we probably extended her life by fighting as we did.

As I've mentioned--this has been a long involved situation. There are so many details I don't feel free to offer here. I don't feel we've won completely, but I do know that my MIL is better off than she'd have been if we'd done nothing. Unfortunately, we had no idea what was happening until it had reached a crisis situation--and really--who ever suspects those they love of stealing from their own mother?

It hasn't been easy, and we've felt very alone at points--because no one wanted to help us, and the thieves went around telling horrendous lies about us to discredit us. What they couldn't do, though was erase the paper trail of stupidity they'd left behind, so in the end, there was no way for them to deny what they'd done.

I would say this--if you even suspect in your family, that someone might be taking what doesn't belong to them? Get a good lawyer, and demand an accounting. If everything's fine--great. But don't wait. As soon as you intuit something's wrong, get on it. It's best to stop this sort of hemmoraging as quickly as possible. Unscrupulous people can do a lot of damage very quickly, unfortunately.

I've been with Scott 18 years. In the first few years, just starting out, we had several attorneys, maybe 10 or so, sharing office space on and off at different times. They were all greedy, lazy bums. Every last one of them.

Larry came to pick me up after work more than once to find me in tears because one of the attorneys was padding his bills for work he never did. He'd add all these charges to clients' bills and then tell me to "make sure this [date] doesn't fall on a weekend or holiday..." Back then I was too young and naive to speak up. When Scott finally found out what was going on, that guy was out of here.

One attorney actually had *me* attend court ordered mediation sessions with clients, instead of attending himself. Same attorney had me attend all his court appearances with him, because he was too lazy to come back to the office and *dictate* what the court ordered, I took notes and came back and drew up the orders.

There was one attorney that had a contract with DHW to establish paternity cases and get child support orders entered. I served one guy with papers to have paternity testing done. He lived way out in the boonies, one of those "Freemen" that don't believe in the goverment, taxes, getting driver's licenses, etc. etc.
Anway, after he was served, he and his wife came barreling in here one morning screaming at me, banging his fists on my desk, threatening me...
The attorney who had the contract actually kicked out his window screen and crawled out the window and sped off in his car.
Scott came flying up the stairs (where my office was) and diffused the situation.
That was the last attorney we rented out office space too.

If anything happens to Scott, I'm out of this business.