The Stigma of Changing Attorneys

If you are in a divorce proceeding,  there may come a time when you decide to change attorneys. You might have good reason to change attorneys: maybe the attorney didn’t file papers on time, or won’t return your calls, or is ignoring your directives or is milking your case for fees without doing productive work.  However, the mere fact that you exercise your absolute right to change attorneys won’t help against an aggressive opponent who may try and use it as a tactic to undermine your credibility with the judge.   When the judge hears:  “She’s already had four attorneys. Four attorneys!!!”  that is sometimes used as code to the judge to view you negatively as a difficult client: the perception is that you have no good reason to change your attorney, are wasting money with a new attorney,  and don’t deserve to obtain an award of legal fees from the “monied spouse” for the new attorney. In fact, I have this situation in a case right now, where the client has been stigmatized by changing lawyers. I can’t tell the Judge that the former lawyer wasn’t up to doing his job because he was ill, (which I know to be true) and left the file in total disarray. I asked the former lawyer to inform the judge that he couldn’t prosecute the case and that it was in the client’s interest to change attorneys. But the former lawyer refuses to disclose this to the presiding judge.  (I actually asked him to draft an affidavit and take responsibility, but he refused.)  He explained to me that he’s in front of that judge nearly every day, and it could damage her favorable impression of him if he were to admit the truth.

If this should happen to you, the judge may have to be gently educated that people in good faith often change lawyers in divorce cases. One attorney in her article on Huffington Post, said that half of the cases she handles were first handled by another attorney. At a legal fee arbitration in which I was representing the client against her former attorney, the arbitrator herself said it is well recognized that clients change divorce attorneys all the time, so there should be no stigma against the client.

Here’s an idea:  If the New York court system would lift the secrecy from the lawyer disciplinary system and allow the public to find out the number of complaints have been lodged against a particular attorney, maybe clients wouldn’t need to change attorneys so often, because they would have had the opportunity to avoid those attorneys with the most complaints lodged against them —  indicating patterns of alleged misconduct.  The client would know how to protect her-himself before it’s too late – after the lawyer hiring agreement is signed.  In my work to rescue the family courts and families from attorney misconduct, misrepresentation and greed, I can tell you in the past twenty years,  the same attorney names came up over and over again when people have called me to complain. Certainly, it’s no secret to the disciplinary and grievance committees which attorneys have the most grievances against them.  So isn’t it time to let the public know too? It is time for the matrimonial bar to shed some light on the myth that the client is just being difficult by changing attorneys, and to acknowledge that changing attorneys may be the only way for a client to protect her or his case against an undisclosed ethically-challenged lawyer.