Law Office of Tyler L. Merrill - Seattle, WA

I reached out to Mr. Merrill to help me when I was being bombarded by my Ex and her not so honest Lawyer. That call to Mr. Merrill was the BEST decision I have ever made! Mr. Merrill stopped them from trying to trick me into agreeing to stuff. From the beginning Mr. Merrill listened to me and my concerns. He did not talk down to me, but rather helped me know my life was not over. Mr. Merrill was always extremely knowledgeable, prepared, and friendly. When you are talking to Tyler you can actually feel he cares. I think that is what sets him apart from other lawyers, is that he really cares. He would tell me what I needed to hear not fill my head with things I wanted to hear. Each step of the way he was very prepared to fight for me. He was amazing at making sure the facts were made clear. I HIGHLY recommend Tyler Merrill!

Supportive and helpful, received the legal advice needed for particular situation.

Highly knowledgeable and very responsive. I never felt left in the dark throughout the legal process with Tyler. He provided clarity with every question asked and strived to make things as simple and convenient for me. I really appreciate the extra steps he took to prevent me from having to take extra steps. To sum up, it was thanks to Tyler that I had such peace of mind throughout the entire process and would without a doubt consult with him again if ever a similar situation should arise.

The Punchline: No legal advice, primarily clerical work for attorney fees. The Summary: - I had to figure out on my own how to counterattack. And I did all the reading/investigation of all the documents (followed through on my own ideas). - In the end my ex agreed to the terms of my 2nd counter-offer, all ideas and planning work done by me. - Mr. Merrill was mostly - passing emails around and - reviewing the work I've done. The bill for the services above was over $15k. The Details: The task: child support modification (my ex wanted more after alimony ran out). The costs: ~$15,000. Mr. Merrill does not seem to have an assistant for clerical work. He is the one doing back and forth emailing and he charges attorney's hourly rate for these trivial services. In fact, after we agreed with the opposing party and all we had to do was to sign, send the docs to the other side, then get a copy of approved docs, these last steps cost me close to $1000 in his fees. It was the pinging of the opposing party's lawyer, back and forth reminding etc. "Review Final Orders"? I never asked for it. The value: Besides passing emails back and forth Mr. Merrill did review the forms I filled. But that was about it. I heard no legal advice, no plan of winning my case. In fact, on at least one occasion Mr. Merrill asserted that there are way too many variables to predict favorable outcome of my case. It sounded like nothing at all depends on our strategy and hard work here. The closest thing to "legal advice" I heard from Mr. Merrill was that "you can send a counter-offer". I realize that attorney's time is expensive, and I did not expect him to do the heavy lifting or digging through the opposing party's volumes of documents and finding all the errors, intentional or not. Not only Mr. Merrill did not do that, but he never gave me any suggestions on what to do and how to beef up arguments during negotiating offers/counter-offers. Naively I sent my first counteroffer "cold", without any prep or arguments. "here is what I?m willing to pay you". Mr. Merrill reviewed it and sent out, w/o ever pausing and telling me: "man, this is useless, they'll just decline it". Sure enough, the other side declined, and that useless attempt cost me over $3k in his attorney's fees. Next time I learned my lesson did a lot of homework (that I came up with on my own). It helped me to considerably negotiate down modified child support terms after several iterations, always beefed up by data. Now if my friends ever have to deal with child support modification, I have several advices for them on how to negotiate. In fact, here are some for you for free: don't leave a stone unturned in the petitioner's financial statements; most likely it is infused with misinformation. Question every line. Look back at how much you've invested into your kids outside child support payments. Mr. Merrill, Family Attorney, had no such tips for me for my money.

The divorce is not contested or heated. Thus, I cannot assess Tyler's expertise for more difficult scenarios. For my case, Tyler competently supported the divorce without any issue.

Tyler did a masterful job helping me navigate a long and challenging Family Law case. He was patient and fact oriented throughout the whole process, and I'm very happy with the resolution.