Leigh and Dougherty Family Law

I had a horrible experience with Kym Dougherty as my lawyer! Just the highlights of her terrible representation of me and my kids' interests: She did not disclose to me her personal friendship with the opposing counsel, Meredith Johnstone, and actually made it seem like she didn't like Johnstone. In my opinion, this conflict of interest created an ethical problem in several situations. For example, I paid her for her time toward creating a parenting plan that I had already agreed on with my ex; she did not create the parenting plan but instead got money for her personal friend by pressuring me into having my ex pay Meredith Johnstone to write the initial parenting plan. In over 7 months she was unable to finalize a parenting plan that was completed in about 2 weeks once I switched lawyers! (and btw, she charged me several hundred dollars to prepare my file when I finally got brave enough to switch lawyers). Kym missed a deadline and sent me documents right before they were due, despite agreeing to complete them right away after we met; since I work nights I didn't even have time to review the documents before having to submit them to court. More than once she took weeks to respond despite my multiple attempts to contact her. I feel like this combination of lawyers created problems that weren't previously there. Kym's communication skills were terrible in my experience; not only was she bad about reasonably prompt responses and meeting deadlines, I gave her documents and told her my priorities for the parenting plan multiple times and it seemed like she never advocated for those priorities to enter the parenting plan - also seems a little convenient that the more disagreement between my ex and I and the more times I have to explain my position=more money for these two lawyers. She charged me for multiple calls between herself and Meredith Johnstone that did not equate to a parenting plan reflecting my interests even after I asked her to stop billing me regarding the topic of scheduling because she was so ineffective in that regard. There are lots of lawyers in New Mexico, please don't be swindled by this one like I was!Kym sat on the New Mexico State Bar Disciplinary Board and is probably friends with most of the current members, so I don't expect anything to come of it, but I filed an ethics complaint against her.

Tiffany Leigh and Mariah Poole are excellent. Very kind, knowledgeable, and respond quickly.

Contrary to the previous review, in my experience Kim was fantastic. She did an amazing job in advocating on my behalf for the adoption of my daughter, her billing was straight forward, and her advice was straight forward and made sense. As an attorney myself, I can't imagine I was an easy client, but she patiently answered all of my questions, provided me with a reasonable price for services, and we got the adoption done. I have nothing but good things to say about this attorney and this firm. 10/10 would recommend.