PETER ALAN JOSEPH, ESQ.

i put a retainer down, nothing got done for 5 months and now the phone lines are down so i essentially been robbed of money.

I went to Peter Joseph office early January to file for asylum fora young man who was seeking asylum. Mr Josephs office is in his rather old and unkempt apartment which is up 5 flights of very steep stairs. I gave him$100 in cash for the consultation which was advertised as free which he later claimed took 31/2hours and forwhich he charged $175 an hour. We also gave him a retainer of $2500 to which he added the $100 for the "Free Consultation" We only saw him about 3 times, once when he filled out the supposed Asylum application which he later claimed was written in his own illegible hand writing.
He kept changing the times of our apointments in texts without any confirmation that we actually recieved them.The last apointment we made around January 6 which was just before the year to file for asylum was up, we went to his office at 4pm.He buzzed us in and when we opened the door he was in bed sleeping. He claimed we didnt have an apointment. And we had to leave because he was tired and we should come back the next day at 11 am. The next day he messaged that 2 pm would be better for him. I told him that we could not continue using his service and that he could keep $600 for his time and return $2000, which he refused. After haggling he returned $1000 and said he would give us any documents of ours he had at 2pm but then texted again that we could pick them up at a cleaners across for his apartment on Waverley Place.
The document he returned was only a handwritten letter I had written detailing why the young man was late in filing for asylum which was on Mr Joseph's recommendation and was not even correct.
In summation, Mr Joseph who is currently undergoing chemotherapy, fraudulently represented himself as an experienced immigration lawyer, padded the hours he spent doing "research" etc. and created a situation where not only are we over the time limit for filing for asylum, and he has put the young man in question in danger of being rejected for his asylum application, but we have now to pay another lawyer to undo his negligence.
I have written proof of
all of this and am now seeking the return of $1600 of his retainer.
My recommendation is to stay away from Peter A Joseph Esquire. As per my recent experience, he is a total fraud and a very poor lawyer with serious memory issues.