Am I expecting too much?

I'm in the middle of a divorce, and after my wife hired an attorney I've had to hire my own, and I am not impressed. He's been extremely slow to forward communication from opposing counsel (sometimes up to a week), once did not respond at all to an urgent email from me when I found evidence of opposing party violating a financial restraining order (I had to call the office to get him to respond), and has consistently made mistakes that I've had to catch myself.

For examples of the last, he recommended as a mediator a partner at the opposing counsel's firm, which I feel makes him look like he's not paying attention; unfortunately I didn't catch that one until after he had sent it to them, so I bet they had a bit of a laugh.

We had a deadline of last Monday for opposing party to accept a reconciliation proposal or we'd file for contempt; at my attorney's suggestion I didn't have him draft the proposal in advance, but we were waiting until they responded. When they did not accept, I asked him to immediately draft it. On Thursday I hadn't received anything so I asked for an update, and he responded Friday saying he'd have it that evening. He did not.

I got a draft on Monday that he admitted was incomplete and would be finished "that day," and now I got a final version with signature request at 9pm today (Thursday) with typoes in things like people's names and "attorney's fes". So now he's gotta fix that as well, more delays.

I sent an email to the senior partner at one point (before the contempt deadline) saying that I didn't feel I was getting the service I expected from a high profile, high price firm, and she said she'd have a talk with him and it should be corrected. It doesn't seem like that's the case.

At what point am I being a pain in the ass, or should I escalate this to her again and ask for it to be reassigned? She had told me she'd be able to reassign it if I continue to be unhappy, and potentially take it on herself, but that's going to cost me more per hour and probably some time for her to come up to speed on the case (there's a business with a valuation disagreement involved as well).

Any not-legal advice for dealing with getting legal services?

Posted Feb 26, 2026, 7:55 AM UTC · locked

01
Loading comments…