Complaint Review: Michael J Alber Esq Alber Sklavos

In my opinion the worst law firm ever. I believe they are too busy to effectively give the attention needed to resove cases in a timely manner or that they truly want to (again it's my opinion based on my experience outlined below).

I found the whole office to be extremely unproffesional and uncaring. I hired Michael but only spoke to him one time when I signed the retainer. There were lots of excuses from Jean that he had personal things going on etc... Also, they had in the 15,000 initial retainer agreement that if settled before the 15,000 was used up that they would keep the remainder of the retainer and not refund it to me. I had this clause removed after having the paralegal and Jean Mercurio go back and forth to the man behind the curtain instead of having him come back into the room to speak with me directly. 

At that first and only meeting with Michael, he talked a good talk and acted as if he was going to be very involved in my case and get me a trial date immediately. Jean claimed he was the best and would be hands on and the one negotiating for me and at all of the court appearances. This turned out not to be true and my case went on for another year, cost me an astronomical amount of money and Michael never once reached out to me to help with my case.

There was only time Michael contacted me and that was by email this past February on the day my daughter had surgey demanding I replenish my retainer (which still had money in it and I had just recently replenished) and threated to releive the office from my case if I didn't pay that night. He knew I wouldn't want that given the fact that I just finally got a trial date 8-9 months after hiring them.

Here is my experience with Jean Mercurio Esq the one I originally contacted because our daughters had played a sport together and I thought she would care and truly try to help me. She insisted that Michael handle the case but when he failed to, she took over, in my opinion poorly, might I add.

In my opinion, Jean was subpar and did nothing to effectively negotiate for me and seemed to have no interest in helping me settle my case. I was incredibly dissapointed with her poor comminication (tons of calls, texts and emails ignored), her lack of organizational skills (I repeatadly had to email her documents I had already send and was charged for the same things multiple times), inability to focus on my case and poor preparation for my trial which took over three years to get scheduled. Despite me being in real estate for over twenty years, she wanted me to value my house hundreds of thousands of dollars over maket value. When I told her what actual market value was and supplied comps, she didn't want to hear it. Sidenote the appraisal came in for a price right around what I had said and I am buying my ex out at market value. We spent days at depositions with her asking me and my ex tons of questions, costings thousands of dollars. Shortly thereafter it was time to go to trial. Despite this and also spending hours on so called prepartion for trial, she didn't spend any real time actually prepping me. I had no idea what she would be asking me up on the stand or how to answer the odd questions she asked me that appeared to be beneficial to my ex. That being said, this created a very stressful and confusing few days ending with me accepting what I believe to be an unjust settlement to be paid in a very short amount of time that ultimately hurt myself and my family. After the settlement agreement was signed, I had no guidance on what to do next. About a month later, after hiring a great attorney to handle the Qdro for me, I found out that her office did not submit the final judgement of divorce. I called to inquire as to why and apparently they just didn't get to it yet. Once they did finally submit it, it was rejected multiple times because it was filled out wrong. Each time I had to notify them to request they resubmit it because again they were not on top of things.

In all honesty, the only thing this office was on top of was reaching out to me every time my 15,000 retainer was down to 20% which seemed to be every few weeks.

My best advice would be to do your research and to get a referral from someone that has had a good experience with whomever you choose.