In the midst of a 4-day trial involving a bitter family business dispute, my clients Raef Lawson and Elizabeth Lawson appeared in Court on June 10, 2024 and agreed to the terms of a settlement placed on the record in the presence of the trial judge. Each of them also confirmed their satisfaction with the quality of legal services they received from our law firm . Included in this PDF file linked here is a copy of the transcript of the June 10, 2024 hearing. Settlement Hearing Clients Agree to Settlement and Acknowledge Satisfaction with our Services Note the following colloquy taken verbatim from the June 10, 2024 hearing transcript:
Q : Okay. And you are satisfied that the settlement represents a fair and equitable result?
A: Yes
Q. Okay. And are you satisfied with the services that my law firm has provided to you?'
A. Yes.
But less than an hour after the hearing had concluded, Raef Lawson, in complete contradition of what he had just testified to in Court, wrote a false scathing one-star Google review about me and my firm. Raef Lawson further caused the same negative review to be published by his mother, Elizabeth Lawson.
Since Raef Lawson refuses to withdraw his false review, I am compelled to set the record straight. On two separate occasions, Raef Lawson, Elizabeth Lawson, and Catherine Lawson (Raef's sister) then petitioned the trial Court to vacate the settlement. The Court rejected both applications. (The Lawsons previously caused the same June 10, 2024 settlement transcript to be posted on the Court's website as an exhibit to their own motion papers asking the Court to vacte the settlement).
Here is the false Raef Lawson review published under an abbreviated name "Ray Lawson." Previously, Mr. Lawson caused a duplicate review to be posted on a burner account that he created under the name of "Concerned Citizen". My public reply on Google follows.
I had a really bad experience with Glenn Reiser's representation.
When we met with him and his brother, they said we'd always be in the driver's seat. But instead of driving, it ultimately seemed closer to getting run over. We feIt we got off to a promising start for the first few months, but after that, the momentum took a nosedive and it seemed like we barely had any input at all.
In all fairness, when he took our case over we did have a judge who by his own words was showing partiality to the other side. But after pointing that out, he didn't do anything about it. So we kept being hit with bad rulings. At the time we were told there was nothing we could do about it. Just wait for the appeal.
He doesn't really seem to know too much about land value outside of his area either with particular circumstances and he made an awful assessment of one of our experts, which turned out to be the opposite of what he said.
Rather than aiming for the best possible scenario for situations that arose he seemed to be repeatedly proud that it wasn't the worst possible outcome.
Then back in a pretrial conference call, the judge verbally approved me to testify virtually because I'm out-of-state but Glenn dragged his feet and never wrote the request that was agreed upon. I had assumed he did this but then 2 months later he forgot completely about it then gave me a hard time that I didn't want to testify in person when I had already received permission to do it virtually. But because he delayed, it cost me more having to come out in person when it was never necessary in the first place.
When driving to court, it appears he charges his actual hourly rate for legal work and not just mileage reimbursement which adds up if the court is in a different county. Mileage/gas and toll reimbursement is actually added on top of this.
There was also wasted time and money with him. One smaller example is his firm ordered video depositions then they forgot they ordered them and they wanted to use the written transcripts instead which were much cheaper and we could've just gone with originally. Again a small example, but it gives you an idea.
He appeared to triangulate the plaintiffs he was representing in our case as well.
Whenever he did something questionable, in my observation he'd do it verbally to one of the plaintiffs. He lied to me about something another plaintiff said which made us make a decision, based on the false information he provided, which boxed us in and we never really recovered from it. Then when I found out what happened from the other plaintiff and called him out on it he didn't tell the truth about what happened.
When I wanted to switch attorneys, I asked for the files of our case. When he responded if digital worked. I replied yes, then he never sent them over. After that it was too late in the case to switch to a better one.
Ironically, he threatened to leave the case close to the last minute when I disagreed with him on some issues because I felt it wasn't being honest.
A lot of the communication with him felt like a manipulation and that I wasn't being told the information directly. In fact, he was so completely wrong some times that by doing the opposite of what he said was the better move. At one point, he admitted, "you were right," to one of the other plaintiffs. However, I wanted my attorney to be right. That's what we hired him for and it made me lose all faith.
I personally found him to be dishonest. And while he definitely is an amazing and expertly skilled trial attorney, he seemed awful at a lot of other aspects of being a lawyer. The worst being negotiating in my and the other main plaintiff's opinion. He felt very draining to be around and deal with. A case that spans over a long period of time is difficult enough but dealing with him just seemed like it added to the burden.
Response from the owner Edited a year ago
This entire review is a complete fabrication of the truth. The case was a bitter family dispute and settled for a confidential amount after 4 intense days of trial and before the trial was to resume. The settlement amount was suggested by the client and was agreed to by the other side.
The judge scheduled a hearing to approve the settlement. The client attended the hearing and was given the opportunity to approve or disapprove of the settlement. Client approved the settlement after being questioned by the judge. Based on testimony from the client, the judge approved the settlement.
During the course of the settlement hearing, in response to specific questioning by the judge, the client confirmed that he was satisfied with my firm's legal services. However, in an about-face, by the time I got back to my office after a 1 1/2 hour drive back from the court, on the same day the settlement was approved, the client posted this review which is replete with false statements. The attorney-client privilege prohibits me from revealing all of the communications that occurred with the client that led to the settlement being agreed to in the first place.
The other 44 5-star reviews and my impeccable reputation developed over 33 years speaks for itself.
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