Terrible Lawyer! Avoid at all costs!
What an absolute nightmare and a waste of my time working with James Fridie! I retained him in late 2020 to handle my expungement. We received the expungement order signed by the judge in April 2021, and he told me it could take up to a year for the state police to remove the records. Fine. April 2022 comes around, and I noticed that the expungement has not been completed and records still showing on background checks. So James Fridie begins investigating as to why... fast forward 8 months to
December 2022, James Fridie cannot figure out why the expungement is not going through and tells me he is constantly calling the prosecutor's office and courts to find out what's going on... fast forward another 6 months to June 2023, he claims he is still calling and mailing the documents repeatedly with no solution in sight! I even offered to pay him EXTRA to make this a top priority, but he declined and still cannot figure out the issue. August 2023 comes, and still no answer from James Fridie, so I took it upon myself to contact the court, the prosecutor's office, and the state police to figure out what's going on. Within an hour, I discovered that the root cause is that James Fridie left out the criminal case number and only included the indictment number on the expungement! BINGO, I thought; this will be an easy amendment, and the expungement will be completed soon (it's been 3 years now). I told James Fridie my findings and proved that this is the issue with my co-defendant's order of expungement, whose expungement was successfully completed in late 2021, and records were removed! We both filed at the same time but with different lawyers. I wish I had used the same lawyer as my co-defendant. James Fridie states he will amend the expungement and send it to the judge again. This was on Aug 13 2023, then silence! All he has to do is have his secretary make a few sentence amendments to the document and mail it to the judge. James Fridie has not responded to six emails in the past four weeks and over 15 phone calls to his office!
Out of the blue on Oct 11 2023, James Fridie re-appears claiming he has been busy with a trial, so I guess he just forgets about all his other clients for weeks on end when this happens? He has now miraculously gotten in touch with the prosecutor's office after one and a half years of not being able to, and now says that amending the order to include the criminal case numbers will not fix anything but still has no solution for me and says he is waiting for a return call from the expungement office. I ask James Fridie how long I am expected to wait, and he does not respond (of course). Fast forward to today, November 27, he has still not responded or provided a solution, and I have followed up every week by email. Again, all he has to do is amend 1 sentence to the expungement order which I have proved to him with co-defendant's orders.
I will now have to retain the lawyer my co-defendant used and start the process from scratch, which will now take another year at minimum! I paid James Fridie $1300 in late 2020 for a simple expungement that should have been finalized by mid-2022. I wasted three years with James Fridie and got no results! Absolutely horrible service from James Fridie and his office. If you are considering retaining James Fridie, please think again; he was not even able to handle an expungement case! Avoid at all costs!
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James Robert Fridie III's Response: While I am sorry this person feels this way, I respectfully disagree with this review. This client retained me for an expungement which was granted in 2021. He indicated to me afterwards that certain charges were still showing up on a background check. I sent his expungment petition out to numerous police departments and state agencies in an attempt to rectify the issue and many of the townships that were showing up were removed from his record. There is one charge still showing up and I have been working nonstop to see what I can do to get it removed. I told this individual I would contact him as soon as a I had an update. I have left many messages with the assistant prosecutor and county criminal division regarding this issue and will continue to do so until it's rectified. He is incorrect when he says amending the document to include the complaint number will rectify the issue. He will be in the same situation he is in currently. Despite this review I wish him all the best.
