How bad is it if a lawyer hides her maternity leave from you and then just drops the case?
My estate attorney hid her pregnancy (and planned maternity leave) and continued to bill me after she knew she would not be able to complete the task I hired her to perform. She also did not transfer the file to another lawyer at the firm, but billed me for the attempt. When she finally disclosed her maternity leave to me, she buried the info in a dense email about something else. When I disputed the invoice that ensued, she ended up trying to charge my credit card for the bogus invoice after I explicitly told her not to, which I believe is considered an "unauthorized charge."
So in 6 months, nothing was accomplished. For the last two months, she knew she would have to drop the file but made no effort to transfer it to another lawyer and ended up having to drop it.
She is trying to downplay my complaints and make me the bad guy because I took a long time to respond to a couple of her emails.