Hartley & McGehee: A Limited Liability Law Partnership

although they represent my husband in our divorce and I am Pro Se. They seem to be helpful and professional altogether good people.

I cannot recommend working with Hartley & McGehee on any legal case. From my experience, they were unresponsive, slow, and expensive.

After a $250 consultation on 2022-02-14 regarding divorce, I was left with a positive impression of Hartley & McGehee. On 2022-02-22, I hired Hartley & McGehee as my legal representation in seeking a divorce. My case was primarily handled by Elsa McGehee, Kalani Kim, and Alyssa Le’i.

164 days and $5,441.77* in fees later, I terminated the services of Hartley & McGehee on 2022-08-05. Within this timeframe, the great accomplishments of Hartley & McGehee were limited to (1) filing the Complaint for Divorce and related documents with the court, (2) serving my spouse with the case paperwork, and (3) proposing a Divorce Decree which was ignored by the defendant.

After terminating their services, Hartley & McGehee waited until 2022-08-30 to file their motion to withdraw, squandering another 25 days of my case. Not only did they waste more of my time, but Hartley & McGehee continued billing me after terminating their services, sending an invoice which included an additional $714.44* in fees from 2022-08-09 to 2022-08-25.

Here are a few other highlights from my experience with Hartley & McGehee:

• They provided me with misinformed guidance on the sponsor’s contract of USCIS Form I-864, even after discussing the matter with their immigration law colleague. The key piece of misinformation they provided is that the immigrant’s income (including alimony payments) would not reduce the financial obligations of the contract, and they insisted that their guidance was correct even after I cited multiple legal cases to the contrary.

• When refunding the remainder of my deposit / trust account, they mailed the check to an old address in the wrong state despite having been provided with my latest address.

• Elsa McGehee admitted plainly in an apology to me on 2022-08-10 that they had “been short-staffed.”

• They failed to send me all relevant documents for my case, such as email communications with their immigration law colleague, when I requested them upon terminating their services. I needed to pry further with more specific requests, and I am still not certain if I have everything.

• They cautioned against getting a restraining order against my abusive spouse because it “may make our communication with her a bit tricky” and left me to “handle that on [my] own.” In an unrecorded call, they also downplayed the severity of my spouse’s abuse and harassment since it was no longer physical. However, my spouse has continued harassing me with _thousands_ of messages and numerous voicemails using _hundreds_ of spoofed phone numbers to circumvent attempts to block communication.

• I requested multiple times that we proceed with advancing the divorce in court in order to have a hearing and a resolution because the defendant was not being responsive to our proposed resolution. These requests were ignored, which was the primary cause for this case being dragged out for so long.

• On 2022-03-03, near the beginning of the case, I emailed a list of 16 direct questions regarding the case and how to complete the Income & Expense and Asset & Debt forms. Alyssa Le’i responded only to questions #4 and #12, ignoring the rest.

* This is a sum of the subtotals, not including the 4.712% tax or the 10% discount for early payment.

The team at Hartley & McGehee are professional, compassionate and serve with integrity. I recommend them highly.