Sawyer Mediation - San Francisco, California

Aric Johnstone

Overall our experience with Chris and Lisa at Sawyer Mediation was not positive and I would not recommend their services to others. My ex husband and I had what I think was one of the simplest mediation cases to navigate, and while we ultimately did get to an acceptable outcome in a reasonable amount of time, my concerns are primarily with their inconsistent and in some case unprofessional communication, as well as the quality of the work provided. Specifically:

- we consistently had to chase Lisa for responses to emails, the nature of which were clarifying information from confusing, inaccurate, or incomplete emails from her or Chris. Responses often came after weeks of chasing and most recently we haven’t gotten any responses after chasing for a month

- the court forms they used for us were almost entirely template based and required very little information to be input that was specific to us. Despite that, multiple forms were completed with transposition errors that we identified and had to have Lisa resolve. This felt very sloppy.

- Chris’ approach to the mediation meetings felt sloppy and unprofessional as well. He seemed mostly unfamiliar with our case at the start of our meeting and was getting up to speed during our meeting, then in a follow up meeting I actually had to stop the conversation and ask him to speak more professionally to me, as he seemed very bothered by my questions to better understand how our spousal support determination was being made.

- my last issue is that they collected a retainer from us and Chris assured my ex that because our case was so simple, if they didn’t bill to that retainer we would get refunded the remainder. My best guess is collectively Chris and Lisa spent 10 hours on our case in total (inclusive of the time Lisa had to Spend correcting errors), in which case we should definitely be getting some sort of settlement of prepaid fees... but who can say as I’ve been chasing a final statement on account for over a month and they’ve just ghosted us.

Kendra Jacobson

I went through a divorce several years ago. I tried to "do it myself" and after several rounds of the paper work being returned, I was very frustrated and upset. I went to Chris Sawyer to have him help me finalize everything with the courts. Chris determined that because my ex husband wouldn't participate in the process, it would be simpler to go to court to finish the divorce up. So that's what we did and it was done before we left the court on the appointed day. This was such a relief to me, you can imagine.

He was helpful, courteous and had good humor throughout. Divorce/ Separation is no fun at all but if you have to go through it, it's good to have an ally. He is a good man with a kind heart, who really cares about the best interests of his clients AND their spouses. He is fair and compassionate to both parties, which is also a relief. He will make this process as pleasant as it can be.