Laurel Elizabeth Royse, Attorney At Law

Laurel was a great help to me in my custody/visitation case. She was very thoughtful and sincere when listening to all my family had been through. She offered ideas and solutions that my past attorney had not thought of. Laurel is a wealth of knowledge and information. She was attentive, detail-oriented, honest, and to the point. All qualities I really appreciate in an attorney. Highly recommend

Took the time to let me know I needed representation from another state - without charging me for a consultation!

Laurie. Bless her heart. I realize this one star review might come across as vindictive and nasty, but it's not my intention. Before hiring her, I had zero experience with lawyers, and I know that there will be other people out there in the same position needing representation. In my opinion, Laurie was deficient in several seemingly critical areas of lawyering, namely knowledge, instinct, strategy, communication, and confidence. Knowledge/instinct/strategy all sort of go hand in hand. The summary is that her lack of knowledge led her to an inherently flawed strategy that inevitably failed, essentially forcing me, thousands of dollars later, to start all over again from the beginning with new representation. In terms of communication, her time equaled my money. She required a lot of hand holding for nearly every form of communication. She would send drafts of her work back and forth to me asking for revisions, to the point where I would be offering micro-edits about grammar and wording. This included her personal emails to the other party's lawyer. For that kind of money, no client should have to manage those kinds of details. We would have a conversation over the phone, hang up, and literally 5 minutes later she would call me back rehashing the same topic. We had several unpleasant interactions over the phone, and the last thing I needed was another source of conflict. My biggest complaint with her, however, is that I thought I was hiring a specialist. It was more as if I had hired a primary care lawyer. Despite the fact that it was a pretty straightforward case, she asked permission to hire consultants not once, but twice, which I stupidly granted. I thought maybe this kind of thing was routine for a lawyer in solo practice who didn't have a paralegal to help. Essentially, she had me pay someone else to literally do her work for her, twice. She said they were the experts in the field, and I trusted her. In court, the judge overruled our argument in such a dismissive fashion, it was embarrassing. Worse yet, as we were walking out, she had the nerve to say something along the lines of, "Now you're really going to start spending money." That was the last straw. What I'm learning from talking to other people is that Laurie has quite a reputation in Charlottesville, and it's not a good one. I feel foolish for not figuring this out for myself before hiring her, but lesson learned. Please see Sarah S's yelp review about her as well. I would echo her sentiments. I encourage you to learn from our mistake. I'm searchable, feel free to contact me for further details.