Reviews

I contacted Andrew concerning a sex charge (his "specialty"). He told me it would cost $10-15K to defend me. I was scared, never been in trouble before, which is probably often the case with this type of charge, making it a lucrative class to take advantage of. Regrettably, I was scared enough to hire the first lawyer I talked to, when I should have shopped around. About a week later, a neighbor told me the police had mentioned to several curious neighbors that they had a video tape that they thought "might" be evidence to use against me. I passed this information along to Andrew, who immediately said that unfortunately, now it was going to cost me "$30-35K" to defend me. He had already deduced through what I thought was just casual and friendly conversation, that I would be able to borrow the money from my parents, and convinced me to ask them. Translation: "$30-35K" means $35K. The alleged evidence never even came up in court, but I had already paid Andrew the full $35K, which he demanded up front, so he successfully extracted an extra $20K out of me for what amounted to nothing. His representation of me during the all-important pretrial was downright embarrassing. He arrived totally unprepared, and was cramming through his books in the cafeteria prior to our court session. In front of the judge, he was stammering, flipping through his books and notes, and appeared totally lost. The judge had to assure him to relax and take his time (I forget the exact words he used, but it was to that affect). It was then that I realized that fighting the charges in a trial with Andrew representing me was NOT going to end well. For the year that this ordeal dragged on, Andrew would show me "redacted" cases from other clients of his, that made it look like he could at least negotiate a reasonable plea deal for me. I put "redacted" in quotes, because his secretary would just cover the names with a Magic Marker, although the raised lettering from the copier toner made everything still completely readable. I pointed that out to him, but he didn't seem to care. I can only guess how many other people read my case under similar circumstances. I also had concerns about two audio tapes the police had made. One was a so-called "pretext" call, which was carefully orchestrated behind the scenes with a detective coaching their witness on what to say, and what not to respond to from me. She was encouraged to act like a "drama queen" in order to break me down and make me extra vulnerable, and it worked exactly as planned. The second tape, was of the actual interview with the witness, and the audio quality was completely unintelligible. This was of great concern to me, because the statement that their witness signed off on was completely fabricated, and bore no resemblance to the actual facts of the case. It read like a classic textbook case designed to mischaracterize the actual events and inflict maximum damage on me. I asked Andrew repeatedly to get a clear copy of the interview audio to see how the facts had been transformed from what actually happened, into something nowhere near accurate. Andrew kept putting that off, telling me the prosecutor had assured him he was "working on" getting that done (yeah, right!). Five months into this process, Andrew finally brought the matter up to the judge, who admonished him in open court that he should have brought that up much sooner, and it was too late to bring it up then. The result was his incompetence or negligence cost me a crucial point of contention. At that point, I wanted to fire him and start over, but I had already paid him $35K up front (at his insistence), so I was stuck. There are so many other problems I had with Andrew that I'd like to include, but I just haven't got time for the pain. I wish I could get over this, even though I did manage to get past the six year sentence I had to serve.

Retained Mr Lloyd in May of 2010. False accusations were made by 2 grandchildren. I always maintained my innocence. Lloyd convinced me to plea bargain. Huge mistake! Had to hire another lawyer (Stephen Kahn) to effect a plea withdrawal. 2 months later and tens of thousands of dollars, we received a change. Went to trial and was acquitted. Lloyd was inept and sought to take the easy way out. Paid him tens of thousands and was nearly imprisoned, for no reason. Avoid this man.

I was facing a 3-5 year prison sentence for something that should have been resolved by my first attorney. Mr Lloyd was able to get my sentence limited to 8 months. I would still be in prison if it weren't for Mr. Lloyd. Instead, I am reunited with my family and have been able to put this nightmare behind me.