Mendel Colbert & Associates, Inc.

BEWARE - unethical practice!!! Spend your money on a lawyer who will actually help you and not just charge enormous fees for doing NOTHING, but reading your emails (which they don't respond to), for correcting their mistakes, for procrastinating and dragging out your case (costing you more money in the meantime, while you defend yourself from dishonest opposition)! And making an appointment to speak with a lawyer is nearly impossible. So you are basically left on your own, as you can't get any advise neither by email nor in person. Scam company is excatly same 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' - just in case you refuse to pay your bill that you are disputing. I know a lot of lawyers are hired based on referral, which, unfortunately, was the case in the situation I'm referring to (not mine, but someone else I know). I hope more people read these reviews before they hire. A lot of what was described here happened to someone I know. Further details will be posted later.

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.

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

Unethical practice.

horrible. Go elsewhere.