Mark Nelson

To say that I had I had a bad experience with divorce attorney, Mark Nelson, is like saying that Donald Trump has “bad” hair. It doesn’t capture the nuance—All of the ebbs and flows and waves, and hair product. My problem is that I’m way too trusting. And since I’d never been divorced, I took everything that Mark said at face value. He’d launch into a story about some personal problem (evidently he has a lot of these), and I was under so much stress, that meanwhile, I’d forget to get receipts and agreements with him in writing. So much of our office and phone conversations were spent talking about his private life, that I felt like his therapist! At first I was just being friendly listening, but after a while I was trying to pacify him, so he’d get my case done.During our first meeting, he forgot to bring the paperwork, that I came to his office specifically to sign. I should have turned and ran on that first day! I’m so dumb, but I actually felt sorry for him. After that, it was one problem after another. He left his laptop with clients’ personal information unlocked on his motorcycle and it was stolen.He was actually complaining to me about it, because he couldn’t believe that someone would steal something in La Jolla! I don’t know much about the law, but I’d say that NOT leaving your laptop, unlocked on top of your motorcycle is pretty basic.And don’t ask me why he’d admit to me that he did this. He also told me that he hated doing family law because it was too stressful! It didn’t exactly engender trust in his capabilities as an attorney.There was much, much more that I won’t get into.And I can’t say why I went along with all of this and trusted him for so long, except to say that I thought he was my friend. I trusted him and thought that there was no way that he was charging me for talking about himself —probably because I thought it was odd, (and unwise) for him to be telling me all sorts of private things—that were totally NONE of my business, during our calls and meetings! Finally, I put my foot down and told him that he had to provide me with more official paperwork, so that I could prove that I paid him, and that the case was progressing. He then turned the tables on me, got angry and said he was going to drop my case! Over the phone, of course, so that there wouldn’t be a record of it.I’d already paid him a flat fee to finish my divorce—he said that he’d do this because of all of his personal problems and delays of my case! Despite the fact that I paid Mark thousands of dollars to finish my case, I finally gave up and just cut my losses. I went to another attorney. It was like night and day! With the new attorney, everything that I was charged for, was logged and sent to me in a monthly statement. Plus, I ended up getting a much better settlement than I would have gotten if I’d listened to Mark.