Kivel & Howard

I recently had a fantastic experience with Kivel & Howard. Their professionalism, dedication, and expertise were evident from our first consultation. They paid meticulous attention to detail, examining every aspect of my case and keeping me informed throughout the process. What stood out was their approachability; they explained legal terminology clearly and patiently answered all my questions, which eased my concerns. Thanks to their strategic thinking and experience, I achieved a positive outcome for my case. I highly recommend Kivel & Howard to anyone looking for a law firm that truly cares about its clients.

10/10 experience. Attention to detail, straight forward, ready to tackle problems and address them in an ethical, legal, and multidisciplinary manner. I highly recommend. Scott Howard knows what he is doing. I will trust him with legal matters for our family. An excellent lawyer for family estate problems in Oregon. Thank You to all the professionals at this firm who are so courteous and organized!

If I could choose negative stars, I would. This is a firm works under the guise of Legal Shield. It's their business model. While they will boast about their 25% discount, it will be caught on the back end - leaving clients with at times no discount and at likely with a larger fee than what they would have incurred with a non Legal Shield firm. Scott Howard, in particular is to be avoided. He is not only not reputable, he's dishonest - and will take full advantage of a family in turmoil and use it to his advantage. At a time when siblings have lost their last parent, Mr. Howard not only did not offer condolences in any form, he pounced on the sibling/PR that "didn't need the money" and didn't seem to have any understanding of his fee structure, or how a simple probate matter should have proceeded. It was a perfect fit for Mr. Howard that ended up causing costly errors and a final attorney fee bill that was beyond excessive. There are so many other options for decent, honest probate attorneys - stay away from this attorney. He will not only divide your family, in a blink of an eye he will take a large portion of your loved one's hard earned assets that took a lifetime to accumulate. The reviews for this firm and Mr. Howard were there, the PR simply didn't understand or appreciate how important a bad/good review is for an attorney's reputation. Read all of the reviews for this firm carefully, and look up the turnover rate for staff and staff comments that are also readily available with simple on-line searches. There are good, reputable law firms, this is not one.

I should not even be giving one star. We had Legal Shield via my work and thought it was a great service, until we actually needed the service. My mother's trust was being tied up by my brother, we contacted Scott Howard and he agreed to take our case. We paid our retainer fee and Scott managed to get a copy of the will and trust that we were unable to get. That is about all he did, not worth the $2500 we paid. He then told us he was planning on setting up a court date in Multnomah County (where his office is located) we are located in Malheur county on the east side of Oregon. I believe Scott found out he had to go to court in Malheur County and immediately tried to pawn us off on to other attorneys. One attorney he tried to refer us to would not return our calls. The other attorney was absolutely amazing and spent two hours on the phone with us, but apologetically told us he could not take our case due to the matter having to be resolved in Malheur County and he said he was surprised Scott took the case. Now we had our answer as to why Scott was trying to dump us after being our attorney and wasting our time for nearly a year. We tried to reach out to Scott several times via email and phone, he ghosted us and would not respond back. Then three months later, we get another bill for $3500. REALLY? For what? Scott did nothing for us but write a letter to the attorney representing my brother and getting a copy of my mother's will and trust where it CLEARLY states all court proceedings must occur in Malheur County. Don't waste your money. Scott will talk the talk, but he won't walk the walk. We now have a real attorney who is just shaking his head over what was NOT done and the time wasted with Kivel and Howard.

Unfortunately the attorneys there do not wish to actually help you but will refer you to a third party website where you can do the work yourself plus the fee for the third party website...so why pay LegalShield anything? Or request help from this place? It's no worth the money especially when you have tae do it yourself anyway.