Jacqui Ion Lawyers, Kent Town, SA

Family law services are a buyer beware service and I would suggest in the case of Jacqui Ion be very very buyer beware. In a buyer beware service, there are effectively no real protections for the consumer. This is an odd situation to place people who are probably in a very vulnerable time in their lives in, but this is the reality. You will already probably know that Jacqui charges at the high end of the rates scale so it is very valid to ask, is she worth it? Based on my experience, absolutely not and hence this review. There is no correlation between high end of the rates scale and high level of quality of services based on the measures of skills and knowledge (I learnt that it unreasonable to expect her to know about all aspects of family law), efficiency (interestingly it is counter-productive for Jacqui to be efficient as this would reduce her revenue) and effectiveness (I achieved a much much better result through mediation and another lawyer). During my time working with her, every school holidays she was away on leave. You might want to ask her about what her leave plans are for the next 12 months to see if that continues - given her load is high and her leave is high, it means the amount of intellectual skills applied on your case may be low and/or very pedestrian. If you are in the process of engaging a family lawyer, I am first of all going to say I feel for what you are going through and whatever has brought you to this point. There is no doubt that finalising property/financial settlement, for me at least reduced stress levels enormously. It is a stressful and befuddling time where navigating what is the right thing to do for me and my children now and the future. As a first time user of family law services when I engaged Jacqui in the midst of a lot, I found my naivety in family law and vulnerability in then emotional state cost me dearly. I will share a few tips I learnt so hopefully you can avoid at least some of my mistakes. Your income level and the $ pool subject to property/financial matters in terms of what path you follow matters, it matters a lot: 1. Everyone can get access to some free legal advice from the Legal Services Commission Free Legal Advice - Legal Services Commission of SA (lsc.sa.gov.au). It is free, I would suggest using it. Have a checklist of what matters to you, eg: a. Property/Financial Settlement b. Children c. Child Support d. Dependent Adult Support (post 18 yo) 2. If you are eligible Eligibility - Legal Services Commission of SA (lsc.sa.gov.au), Legal Aid may be able to provide you with good legal services at no cost. 3. If you are not eligible for Legal Aid and your assets are less than $3m and not overly complex (eg home, shares, investment property(s), superannuation), a question you need to ask yourself is, given what could be the cost if you had to go to family court, is it worth it? If you go to family court, you are not going to get much change out of $100K. There is a really good tool to help you figure this out. It is called amica and was created by the Federal Government to assist separating families. It is a quick way to see division of your money and property based on comparing your scenario with thousands of other cases in Australia - Here is a link or you can search it up amica-one. Amica will do 2 things for you. First of all it is going to collect all the information that a family lawyer needs to collect (Jacqui in my case, did not collect all the information collected by amica and this burnt me and is another example of how average her service was). You can save all the details you enter into amica and then print it out should you wish to engage a family lawyer down the track. The better quality the information you put in, the better amica can provide you feedback - a good family lawyer will demand that you provide evidence of all the data (not needed for amica but if you family lawyer isn't asking for evidence

Stay way from her. She only cares about her fees. Very rude and treats clients badly. Also promises far too much than she can deliver.

Jacqui is very unprofessional and rude. She yells and shouts and is a very unhinged person. She is very nervous and agitated most of the time and the worst part is her total lack of professionalism when she is having one of her fits.. It is possible that she may be involved in substance abuse or is undergoing some kind of treatment (or maybe alcohol problem). For the safety of her clients and other people, it would be better if she is reviewed by someone regarding her mental health and professional behaviour.