Paul J Nelson & Associates

Paul Nelson completely mishandled my divorce. He represented me for than six months before I finally fired him, but in that brief time managed to charge over $40,000 for that was not only useless but made an already messy divorce impossible.

He gave me bad advice without ever reading the court orders in the file, causing me to inadvertently violate a court order. He was completely unresponsive to voicemail or email and literally did not read letters or documents that arrived via mail. He filed a motion to compel arguing that opposing counsel had not provided any documents. When we got opposing counsel’s opposition, it was clear that the documents had in fact been provided to Paul but Paul just hadn’t noticed. If you lose a motion to compel, you have to pay the other side’s attorney’s fees. He didn’t care. He charged me about $5000 for preparing the motion. I had to take the hearing off calendar.

He missed THREE separate court dates allowing court orders to be entered against me each time. He failed to file even simple court documents like the substitution of attorney and a “findings and order after hearing”. The former resulted in Paul not having notice of a hearing and therefore my not having representation at the hearing. The latter resulted in my not seeing my kids for over six months and incurring tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees trying to fight to get what I was already entitled to. He missed a hugely important filing deadline, not even because he messed up on his calendar, but because he literally did not even know that there were filing deadlines for these types of commonly filed documents.

Paul did not even advise me that my wife’s income could be imputed to her because she has failed to look for a job. He did not know or advise me to get a vocational evaluation on her.

The final straw was a very important (and expensive) court hearing in which he babbled incoherently and demonstrated a complete lack of knowledge of the case or evidentiary rules. The judge actually ridiculed him on the record.

After every devastating misstep, Paul was never apologetic. He repeatedly used the phrase “no harm, no foul.” He never took action to correct his mistakes. Rather he was always cocky and defensive, and NEVER shy about sending a HUGE legal bill for his incompetent and ineffective work.