Please, what ever you do - stay away from this law firm.
We thought we did all our homework in chosing the right law firm. We checked the AZ Bar - no action listed. We did a search, nothing negative came back (though we should have known by all their advertising-they had a paid ad on every search engine, every "find an attorney website"... They must spend hundreds of thousands a year on advertising alone. When a law firm is good, they get their business from word of mouth-they don't have to promote themselves, a hard and expensive lesson to learn!)
At first, you'll be wooed and in awe of the office and the fact that the head of the law firm himself, Alexander Neirnstein, personally responds to your email/phone call and gives you a free phone consultation. You'll be very impressed by how animate he is about your case and how outraged/appalled at your situation/spouse... He could win an oscar for his performance. You won't hesitate to come down to the office for a full consultation.
If you're like us, you'll jump through hoops to get them the retainer they want, the normal $5,000- no red flags yet... But after you sign that 15 pg contract - it's all down hill from there (actually, that should have been a red flag... Why would you need to sign a 15 pg contract for a simple divorce/custody, what ever? Because they've been down this road you're about to venture on a hundred times before and they've made sure that their interests, yes their interests-not yours, are protected iron clad.) After you sign the contract and hand over your retainer, it won't be long before they show their true colors.
You'll be over charged (they charge a couple hundred dollars just to file the "notice of appearance", the two page, preprinted form that they type your name and case number in and submit to the court to notify the judge and opposing attorney that they are representing you. The new attorney we have now charged only $18... Big difference!), your phone calls won't get returned for days/weeks, you'll try sending emails (like the firm says to do, to save you money - so your attorney can easily and quickly reply back to all your questions/requests the first time... Yeah, right!) but you won't get replies to your emails (not until the 3rd or 4th one) but you'll notice on your bill that you have been charged around $75-$150 for the attorney to "read" each one... Even though they each say the same thing!
The next stage is when they start shuffling you through their firm - that's when things really get expensive and your retainer is almost diminished and yet you're not even a month into the case and you have nothing to show for it!
First you'll be under the impression that Alexander is taking your case, than you'll be swapped to one of the other partners... Than to one of the non-partners and on and on you'll go (as you fall in importance down the food chain) and the best (actually worst) part is... You have to pay each new attorney in the firm to review all the case info (the same info each time)-every time - your attorney in the firm changes. And once your retainer is gone, they will send you a nasty letter telling you pay up or they will be forced to terminate the relationship.
If you are really in a hardship, like we were, they may let you make payments (with 20% interest)... That's when they really crossed the line. They waited until a month before the final hearing and sent us a letter stating that if we didn't give them another $5,000 they'd withdraw... Deja vu? No - extortion.
We didn't have the money and after Alexander Niernstein wrote a couple of demeaning emails saying if we were any kind of parents we'd find the money and not to try and make him feel guilty with our "sob story" etc. We brought up the fact that we had it in writing from the firm that we could make payments (which we did, each month-every month-on time) and it didn't matter.
They followed through with their threats and withdrew leaving us high and dry with the possibility of losing our young child. To make matters worse for us (though we can't prove it, at least not yet) they were in cohots with the opposing attorney because somehow he magically knew they were withdrawing before we did and we immediately began to get bombarded with deposition subpoenas, discovery requests, sanction requests from the court against us... All from the opposing attorney at the same time they withdrew. Pretty convienent.
We're trying to file a complaint with the AZ Bar but when you don't know the law, you don't know what is illegal and what is just getting screwed over by money-hungary, unethical attorneys.
Please, please - choose any other law firm in this state but stay away from NRG! Don't put yourself/family through this hardship. Whoever you choose, make sure they have nothing negative on the state bar's website, they shouldn't have to spend lots of $ advertising (ask around, someone will recommend a good attorney from personal experience) and "buyer beware" of contracts more than a couple pages long and never, ever pay additional "office fees" other than the standard mail/fax/long distance charge.
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