Blackford Law Office PC

After a recommendation from a friend, I hired Amber Blackford to deal with my custody case, around Nov. 25th. I was trying to get full custody of my boys, from their mother. I told her everything I had against them. She proceeded to tell me she thought we had a good case. So I put the $750 down for the retainer, and let her get to work. All the while I was sending her emails, and giving her the evidence that I thought we would need in court. I get told in that my escrow account is getting low, around Feb 26th, so I stop by and drop off $300. This is all before we had even gone to court. Amber asks that we do a deposition, with my ex and her current boyfriend. We discuss it for a bit, and finally I give the go ahead. Her secretary then calls me a few days before the deposition, saying that to continue, I would need to drop off a check for at least $850. I tell her that since I will see Amber at the deposition in just 2 days, and that I would give her a check there. They inform me that they need the money before the deposition. So now I have to find time to make a 40 min round trip to her office, wasting my time and gas, when the next day I would be seeing her at the court house. I make the drive up there, and drop $1000. The next day at the deposition, she is going through her questions, but not getting into any of the real tough questions, she doesn’t ask many of the things that we had previously talked about. She honestly looked like she had not prepared for this at all. During the deposition, she pulls me out of the room a few times, the final time she decides NOW that we don’t have a case. Never once had she ever said anything about her having doubts on the case, the entire time she kept saying we have a case. I feel like she really was just in it for the money. The horrible thing about it, is she knew my money situation, I am a disabled vet living off my disability and my Post 9/11 GI Bill (school money), which is all the income I have coming in. They insisted that I come and make a payment instead of dropping off a payment with her the next day, and that day is the day she decides we don’t have a case. That was about a two months ago, and since I have not received a single phone call, email, or anything about where we go next. I finally got a phone call after I called her, she informed me that since 3 weeks had went by she would have to review my case, and then let me know what happened. That May 25th and I have not heard anything back from her.



The billing is also not handled very well at all. The bill that I received never included any other work than what Amber supposedly had done, despite the fact that I know her secretary did a lot of it. The secretary claimed that anything the she had done, is not billed, just the portion that Amber had done, which made no sense to me. It seemed like the secretary was doing a lot of the work, and then since Amber looked over it and they would then charge for the full amount like Amber had done it all.



I get that sometimes cases can fall through when something pops up, but as far as I can tell nothing new came up. Since she didn’t respond to me I have no way of knowing, and have to go off of what I saw. I would not recommend her to anyone, I feel like she used me to get my money, while never intending to follow through. To take advantage of people for money, especially when you know they are on limited income, is a disgrace.