Robert M Rich

This lawyer has 0% people skills and made me feel at all times if I was not a valued client but someone that he HAD TO DEAL with. His secretary is not much better as she could never give me any useful information concerning my case in his absence when I may general inquiries as to the status of my case. I didn’t like reaching out to his secretary for updates but with Mr. Rich never answering his emails or telephone voice mails at all, the days he was out of the office, which were many, didn’t leave me much choice.
Mr. Rich refused to answer my email or voice messages which lead to additional anxiety which I experienced above and beyond my legal issue which he was handling, or not handling as the case turned out to be. Upon addressing this issue with his secretary in his absence I was told and I quote “we don’t normally give updates to clients”. His secretary went on to indicate that there would be instances where Mr. Riches Office would not give an update for one or two months leaving the client to go chasing after Mr. Rich to find out if he was still actively working on the case or if he had forgotten about it. Without any input from him or his secretary how would one know after such a long period of time?
Mr. Rich also has a very short temper and on more than one occasion would be “yelling” his answers to my questions on the phone which made me very uncomfortable and had the effect, as in the previous review, of making me feel like I was bothering him even though I WAS THE CLIENT!!! The only solution I could think of to get what the opposing counsels client in my case called Mr. Rich “dragging his feet” on a continual basis was to threaten to take up the matter with the New Jersey Bar Association. Whenever I did that all of a sudden he came to life and was answering all my questions and once again moving the process forward for a few weeks until he started “dragging his feet” again.
For the agreement that needed to be drawn up between myself as the plaintiff and the defendant, for my case he took the unprecedented step of allowing opposing counsel to draw up the documents instead of him doing it himself. This had the detrimental effect of causing the agreement to have to go back and forth for revisions a total of five times before a final draft was ready. Also it made me feel like he was not really representing my best interests and was just too lazy to draw up the agreement himself. Again, there was little or no communication on his part and a failure to read my emails CLEARLY STATING what changes I needed in the agreement to make it acceptable. Truly a very stressful and frustrating experience to say the least at this point in the process. Had Mr. Rich taken the time to actually read my emails he would have seen EXACTLY the changes I needed and it would have taken, easily, half the time to get a final draft of this document.{para}To add insult to injury, on the day of the hearing, he asked me for an additional amount of money for what he called “court expenses” even AFTER providing me with a receipt, only at my request, which had the following language in it:
“This represents payment for all legal services in a divorce proceeding with the exception of more than one court appearance, which will be billed at the rate of $500 per court appearance.”
How this individual has been able to stay in business as long as he has is, quite frankly, beyond me as his actions border on the un-ethical and definitely unprofessional.
If you enjoy frustration, complete lack of professionalism and zero people skills this is definitely the Lawyer to contact. If, on the other hand, you are looking for a Lawyer who is sensitive to your needs, professional with good people skills and efficient DEFINITELY look elsewhere.
In Mr. Riches defense there is one thing he does with efficiency