Helena Elias-Mumford, Mooloolaba, QLD

A family member engaged Helena Mumford for what appeared at the time to be a straight forward case involving estate litigation and a challenge to a will. Helena was quite convincing in extolling her experience in this area and knowing no better, she was retained for well over 12mths. What I observed was that Helena does not appreciate her judgement being questioned, and immediately brings out the 'you don't have faith in me' card, 'find another lawyer' - which is hardly an easy thing to do when you've already spent 10s of thousands of dollars on her legal fees and would have to effectively start from scratch again. Helena's experience in this area was clearly insufficient to address the issue my family member had. It was quite shallow, and although Helena's hourly service was cheaper than some other law firms, in my opinion you would be far better served taking any sort of estate litigation/will dispute to a specialist in this field. On the surface you may appear to be spending more, but Helena's claims that this case would be quite straight forward and her initial quote IVO 20K (at most), were completely wrong on both counts. She failed to negotiate any sort of compromise agreement, but at the point where we were able to do it ourselves, she unilaterally severed her retainer, notifying the opposing parties legal team at the same time she notified my family member. So, for over 60K, my family member found herself without a lawyer, and in an extremely vulnerable position because Helena had already advised the opposing legal team who were now well aware of the vulnerable position Helena's client was suddenly in. If you have a simple matter, I suspect Helena would be fine. If it is complex, head straight to a legal specialist who deals in nothing but the area you need assistance in.