Here is what you need to know if nothing else: Do not under any circumstances hire Sarah Banda or anyone at the Bowen Law Offices in Las Vegas, Nevada for your Family Law needs, because they will neglect your case, neglect you, and then bill you for their mistakes. Thankfully, I realized Sarah was going to lose my case due to gross mishandling and I fired her just in the nick of time.

My new attorney, Anne Kolber, was able to repair the damage (at great expense) and win the case for me, but believe me, it was close. What a difference an attorney can make. Now I have both of my kids with me full time, which is something I would not be able to say if I would've stuck with Sarah. Even the opposing attorney said so.

My name is Airine Lugo. I will not hide. This is not an anonymous post.

My story

After years of shared, 50/50 custody, my ex-husband, who had moved to Las Vegas, NV, decided to drag me into court IN NEVADA to get full custody of our children. I live in Arkansas, so imagine my horror. I'm a waitress. I'm not rich. If he won, I'd see my kids twice a year at best. Looking back I believe he expected me not to put up a fight because I'd never be able to afford a court battle.

Lesson #1: Get full custody during the divorce no matter what. If someone says "don't you want to be fair" to get you to agree to shared custody, think about this; if you have full custody you have the power to be fair. If you have a soft heart, then you are the perfect person to have control, so take control or else you're relying on the guy you are divorcing to be fair with you. He won't be. Don't kid yourself. Good people should be in charge. Take charge.

The purpose of the website is to let you learn from my mistakes. A lawyer is an extremely expensive investment. Trust me: They will cost a lot more than you think, and much more than they will lead you to believe. Hiring a lawyer is like buying a used car: don't take the salesman's word for anything. In other words, don't let the lawyer talk you into hiring them. Their entire business is talking, and convincing people of things, so they will always sound great...it's their profession. But their service might turn out to be a clunker like Sarah Banda. A smart gal has a knowledgeable friend go to the car lot with them to point out the bad stuff. I hope to be that friend for you. Read on, and learn from my mistakes and my successes.

So why give Sarah Banda and Bowen Law Offices such bad press?

I was in your shoes just a short time ago, and in this dark period I made the wrong decision to hire Sarah Banda of Bowen Law Offices in Las Vegas, Nevada. She and the Bowen Law Offices took advantage of me when I was most vulnerable. Don't be a victim.

Most of you came here because you're searching for an attorney in the Las Vegas area, and you're trying to make an informed decision at a difficult and painful time in your life and you have nowhere else to turn, and so you find yourself on some lawyer review websites in hopes of finding the advocate you so desperately need. What a terrible position to be in. You are vulnerable. I know, I was in your shoes a short time ago.

Because of Sarah Banda and Bowen Law Offices mishandling---their legal malpractice---I had gone from a sure-fire win in my custody case to teetering on the brink of losing custody completely. If you need more convincing, I will from here on lay out the facts of my experiences with Sarah Banda and the Bowen Law Offices with candor and documentation. I will not bore you with my own story unnecessarily or pour my heart out in search of sympathy. That is not my purpose, or the purpose of this page. My goal is to:

• Warn you to stay away from Sarah Banda and the Bowen Law Offices specifically, giving you my documented, real-world experiences with this unresponsive, judicially lazy, and utterly unprofessional firm.

• Share the obvious warning signs I did not pay attention to so you can see a bad situation ahead with your attorney, whoever they may be, before things get out of hand.

• So you can learn from my mistakes and not make your own because there is no "Attorney Users Manual" in a system designed, run, and maintained for attorneys, by attorneys.

• Be an advocate for change in a broken and corrupt system that puts the obscene profits of lawyers above your rights.

So let me assure you that I don't have an axe to grind against Sarah Banda. I don't hate her nor do I wish her any harm. Honestly, I think she is a very nice person. She's just young and inexperienced and from the sound of it she takes on way too many clients. She never seemed to remember my name, or the details of my case---not something you want when the custody of your two minor children is on the line weeks before your trial.

Here is a prime example of how Sarah Banda almost blew it for me, and it's a whopper. It is also going to help you to know this because I'm about to explain an extremely important step in any Custody case that you WILL HAVE TO GO THROUGH. This episode also proved to be my last straw with Sarah. When this happened I knew I had to fire her or I'd lose. It was a very tough choice, but it was the right one.

In any custody case there is a phase called Discovery during which both sides get to ask the other for information in the form of Interrogatories, document Productions, and Admissions that they will then use against each other in court. Strange, but true. And you must hand over what you have even if some of it could hurt your case. Each side must make their requests of the other side well before the court date so the opposition has a reasonable time to respond. You'll get 30 days from the Service Date to comply, and here is the kind of stuff that's often requested:

• Your personal medical records

• Your driving record

• Proofs of insurance

• Employment records

• Tax information from years back, sometimes many years

• Performance reviews from employers, sometimes past employers

• List of everyone in your life

• If anyone you have a personal relationship with has ever been arrested EVER, you'll have to hand over their police records

• A page of Admission statements, where the other side asks you to admit your ex is a good person, a good parent, etc. This one can get very ridiculous, but just do it. And be nice. You're going to want to tell "the truth" about your ex---they guy who is trying to take your kids away from you---but judges hate bickering, so don't do it.

• And more depending on the scope of your case.

The good news is that you get to ask them for all the same things. Either way, everyone is supposed to get time to gather all of these things up. It is a chore. And, unless you want to pay your lawyer $300 or more an hour to compile it all, you'll need to do it all yourself as much as possible. So, while you're working full time, and taking care of your kids, you'll need to stay up late every night sifting though tons of papers, scanning them, creating PDF documents, and so on. You'll have to organize the whole thing, and deliver it to your lawyer for processing. Don't kid yourself, this is an enormous task. Add to this the gut-churning realization that if you get it wrong you will lose custody of your kids.

I cried a lot.

And keep in mind that failure to produce these documents, to cooperate, will get you a Contempt of Court charge, which could land you in jail, get you a nice big fine, and it will most certainly make the judge dislike you before your case has even begun. Not good.

So, here comes the Sarah Banda whopper: I got this email from Sarah's assistant on Sept, 29, 2015,

That's right, Sarah Banda had the single most important document pertaining to my case hanging out in her inbox for 12 business days, effectively chewing up 1/2 of the time allotted to me to respond to a 20 page legal document. This was unforgivable. This is what legal malpractice looks like. But I had ignored so many warning signs up to this point. I'll share those with you in a moment.

The other thing here is that Sarah never consulted us on what we're requesting from the opposition. There were so many things I wanted my ex-husband to answer for, like an inheritance he was hiding so he wouldn't have to pay child support to me on it, but Sarah never answered emails in a timely manner, and she never asked me what I wanted to do. She simply waited for the other side to do something so she could react to it. But in a case like this sitting around is a good way to lose, and we were losing. I'll let you in on Whopper #2 in a moment, but first, some history.

How I ended up with Sarah Banda

On April 2015 I received a letter from my Ex-husband's lawyer that he wanted full custody of my two children just two months before my children were set to come live with me for a year in our year on/year off arrangement. Being a mother, I fought back. I needed a lawyer in NV quick.

Remember, I live in Little Rock, Arkansas, while my ex-husband lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, so the first thing I tried to do is get the case heard in Arkansas under the UCCJEA (The Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act). Short story is that I had to get an attorney in Vegas and in Little Rock simultaneously to attempt this. That's two retainer fees totaling several thousand dollars. At this point my savings were just about wiped out. Trust me, court battles are money battles, pure and simple.

So I asked my Arkansas lawyer for a recommendation if they had one. She gave me the name Sarah Banda. Because a lawyer recommended her I figured she must be good. I called and got a free consultation with Sarah and I decided to take her on as my attorney.

Don't do this! Check for yourself no matter who recommends a lawyer to you.

I'm just a waitress, my husband is a bicycle mechanic. My two children live with us in our rented home when they visit or it's my custody time. We aren't rich by any means, and we certainly don't know how the law works beyond what we've seen on TV. Yet there I was, not knowing what else to do, signing a credit card authorization to hand Sarah Banda $1,500.00 after signing some legalese Retainer Agreement document. She sounded so friendly on the phone. So smart. So young. So responsive.

Trust me, once I signed and paid, it was the last time I heard her sound like that.

The hearing was set for a judge from Arkansas and one from Nevada to figure out which state it'd happen in. I needed it to be Arkansas, because my children would be living with me and it would be less disruptive to them and cost me a lot less. Plane tickets and hotels add up quick, not to mention missing a ton of work. I had to win.

We asked Sarah if both attorneys needed to attend the hearing even though she was the only one required to be there seeing that the suit has started in Nevada, and she said, "No" because it was primarily up to the judges anyway. We put Sarah with our Arkansas attorney, Joi, so they could exchange information if need be. Joi said she sent emails to Sarah and even called her, but never got answers back. I was seeing a trend develop: Sarah was not responsive. But I figured she was the professional, and so I let her lead.

The hearing day came. My Ex showed up with his Nevada and his Little Rock attorneys. Sarah was facing a two against one. No surprise, she lost. It was embarrassing and tragic to watch. Sarah stumbled and stammered. The other two destroyed her.

I believe Sarah never intended to win. If she had, she would no longer be my attorney. If it went to Vegas, she'd continue to make money off of me. Perhaps a good business decision on her part. Problem was, this was my life she was playing with. Either she took a dive or she was incompetent. There's no in between. But I stuck with her. I felt like I had to. I had so much money tied up in retainer fees I didn't have another lump sum to go get another lawyer. I hoped she would improve.

The Little Rock judge washed his hands of it. The trial would be in Las Vagas. I was crushed in every possible way. Things had only just begun and I was flat broke. At this point I was relying on my fianc้ to help me go on.

My wedding day ruined thanks to a bad lawyer? Yes, read on:

The kids were in my custody at the time, but the opposition got a court order for Child Interviews to be conducted before the Trial. Now I had to fly to Las Vegas with my children. My fianc้ and I had planned to get married but we postponed it until the custody issue was settled because I was a complete wreck at this point. He said he wanted to come with and that while we were there we'd get married. A Vegas wedding.––

I sent a pretty long email to Sarah informing her of our plan to come there and get married and we wanted to meet her seeing that I had never actually met her. I had hired her over the phone. I was also concerned my ex would pull something. She didn't get back to me for a week. I called and finally got a hold of her and she said she'd be too busy to meet me but she thought the plan sounded great. After I hung up with her I bought 4 round-trip tickets, feeling happy knowing that that my ex was going to have to reimburse me for the kids' tickets because his side had requested the Child Interviews. These were non-refundable tickets, of course.

We made our plans for our shoe-string, last minute wedding.

A week before we were set to go, Sarah forwards a Court Order for Enforcement of Child Visitation. My ex's lawyer had simply marched into court and got a court order that said my kids would be staying with my ex the entire time they were in Vegas. So now I was going to Vegas to get married, but my ex was going to be at the airport waiting to take my kids when we landed. Furthermore, he had zero intention of letting me have them the entire time while in Vegas! He refused to even let them attend my own wedding. Add to this that my ex had purchased rival plane tickets that were for different flight times, and his lawyer had made these the "official" tickets in the eyes of the court.

I was screwed.

Not only was I now stuck with two non-refundable tickets for my kids, but they wouldn't even be with me on the flight.

I emailed my ex, literally begging him to let the kids come to my wedding. He refused at first, but his own lawyer stepped in and advised him to not look like a complete jerk so close to a hearing. He relented and "allowed" my kids to come to my wedding, in a time slot between 4pm and 8pm.

Sarah had completely failed to warn me that this might possibly happen. I've wondered if I'm asking for too much: should she have known? Could she have known? You can make up your own mind, but realize that she is supposed to be thinking about my case. This involves anticipating what the other side is up to and developing counter moves. Here is what this even should have told me:

Sarah NEVER thinks about my case.

This is not what you want in a lawyer. You want a lawyer to strategize with you. You at least want them to come up with some ideas. Something. Anything. Sarah never considered my position. She just waited for things to happen. She was never proactive.

The icing on the cake was when Sarah charged me $100 for the email she wrote to my ex's lawyer complaining about how she'd outmaneuvered her completely. What! Yes, my lawyer whined to the opposition lawyer and then charged me for it.

I pleaded with Sarah to meet with me when I was in Vegas to plan our strategy going forward, but she said her schedule was full. I couldn't believe it. I'd actually be there, in the flesh, all the way from Arkansas, and she wouldn't make even a minute for me after I'd paid her over $3,000. This is a lot of money to me. I'm a waitress, why was this happening to me?

If only you knew just how much I tiptoed around Sarah. I was afraid of upsetting her for fear that she'd not do a good job on my case, or drop me. I can't believe I felt like that back then. I'm embarrassed to admit it now, but it's true: I've been a pushover for too long. And I STILL stuck with her.

My wedding was a fiasco. My ex came to my reception before we were done eating and took the kids. He walked right up to our table, in front of our few guests, folded his arms, and said, "Kids, let's go". He had the court on his side because he had an attorney who knew what they were doing. I felt numb. I started wondering how a mother like me, with no criminal record, with no drug or alcohol abuse issues, with a stable work history, no psychiatric problems---nothing negative---could be on the brink of losing custody of my kids, and all because I was poor and had a lousy lawyer.

We flew back to Arkansas, defeated, but married. I borrowed $2,000 from by good friend. My fianc้, a bicycle mechanic by trade, continued to help me out too.

What happened next made me realize I was in deep trouble:

I got a call one evening shortly after getting back home. It was a Mediation Center in Las Vegas confirming my telephonic attendance at mediation the following morning.

What?

The nice woman was surprised that I was surprised. "Your lawyer should have informed you," she said.

Ahhhh, yes, now I was seeing thing more clearly. I was finally getting mad at Sarah.

Mediation is a court ordered session where the disputing parties, my ex and I, sit down and try to come to terms. The entire thing is moderated by a court official. This is all done through the court system, it is legal, it is required, and it is always part of a Custody case without exception. So why did Sarah neglect to inform me about it? All she had to do is forward the email to me. But she hadn't.

I called Sarah many times to let her know how upset I was, but could only leave messages with her secretary because she was never in her office. I felt powerless, desperate. My kids! Was I about to lose my kids? I was crippled with fear.

I should have fired Sarah right then and there after all that had happened, but I was afraid it was too late, that changing lawyers so close to the trial would be suicidal. And the money. I didn't have it.

I'd secured two credit cards during this time. I now had them. I would fight on.

This is right about the same time that the fiasco surrounding Discovery occurred, which I already talked about. It was the end of the line for Sarah. The next day I Googled lawyers in NV and found Ann Kolber by reading good reviews about her in AVVO. I told my husband I needed to hire a new lawyer immediately or I'd lose. He went to his boss and borrowed $3000. We fired Sarah and hired Ann Kolber for a huge retainer. I maxed out a credit card and used up all my money to do it.

Sarah Banda wasn't done screwing me yet!

As you already know, Sarah hadn't forwarded the Discovery documents to me until 2 weeks had gone by. Now I fired her, and my Change of Council letter bought me a few extra days as I rushed to get all my paperwork submitted so I didn't get a Contempt charge slapped on me.

It is considered unethical for a lawyer to hold your court documents hostage when you fire them, even if you still owe them money. You can complain to the Bar about it. It's well known. You just don't do it.

Sarah did it anyway. She flatly refused to hand over any of my case documents to my new lawyer, Ann. Of course, Ann was shocked. I wasn't surprised. This is why I made this website, to warn you away from Sarah.

Ann actually had to ask the opposing law firm for whatever documents they had gotten from Sarah so we could move forward with the case. The opposition furnished them without delay. Our case went on.

Ann was amazing. She filed every extension, answered every email, talked us through every moment, and in the end, she dismantled my ex on the stand as I sat there in amazement.

A Tale of Two Lawyers:

So there you have it, a happy ending after all. I'm $20,000 in debt, but I have my kids, and my loving husband.

Oh, and Sarah Banda has recently handed me over to a Collections Agency for the $3,000 she says I owe her. Funny thing is that she sent me a bill in a timely manner, and has emailed me about the money on several occasions. I wish she would've worked this hard to win my case. Things might have gone better for us all.

Sarah, if you ever read this: I'm not paying you a dime. You're lucky I'm poor, or I'd sue you for Legal Malpractice...if there even is such a thing.

The End, for now.

I'll keep you all posted as to what the next Sarah Banda episode will be.