Headquartered in Los Angeles, CA. Criminal Lawyers for federal defense and state courts. For criminal justice or legal advice, our defense lawyers serve the U.S.: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, District of Columbia (DC), Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wyoming; and these metro areas: Atlanta Georgia, Boise Idaho, Chicago Illinois, Cincinnatti Ohio, Dayton, Columbia South Carolina, Ft. Wayne Indiana, Green Bay-Appleton Wisconsin, Wausau - Rhinelander WI, Huntsville - Decatur Alabama, Idaho Falls - Pocatello Idaho, Indianapolis Indiana, Louisville Kentucky, Madison Wisconsin, Milwaukee WI, Portland - Auburn Maine, Providence Rhode Island, Newton, Miami, Boca Raton FL, Sandy Springs GA, Arlington, Reston VA, New Bedford MA, Las Vegas, Reno Nevada, Salt Lake City Utah, Phoenix, Scottsdale AZ, Seattle WA, Washington DC, Potomac, Bethesda, Hagerstown MD, NYC, Manhattan NY, Greenwich CT, Newport Beach, Santa Monica, Palo Alto, San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles California and more.

This seems like a recipe for disaster, as they are trying to serve practically every major area, from their Burbank, California headquarters.  The way they operate is by doing lots of advertising in many states, and then just farming out the legal work to the lowest bidder attorney.  They pocket the difference between what the client pays, and what the local attorney is paid for the work.  In fact, the California attorney does no work at all, and provides no supervision or resources for the local attorney.  

Another California attorney that practices this way is Imhoff & Associates, who advertises that they are a "Multijurisdictional Law Firm Serving Clients from Coast to Coast".  On their website, the only attorney that is listed as being employed by the firm is Vincent Imhoff, who appears to have no criminal defense experience other than a short 16 month stint at another law firm.   Firms like this often don't list the individual attorneys that do contract work for them on a state by state basis, as this avoids consumer research into these attorneys and allows them to take the lowest bidder attorney on that case.

I have taken over several cases, where someone hired a nationwide law firm, thinking they were hiring a local lawyer.  In one case the local lawyer showed up at the first hearing, where 99.999% of criminal defendants enter a not guilty plea, and proceeded to try to convince the client to plead guilty as charged at that first hearing.  This makes sense, since they were probably paid only a few hundred or thousand dollars, on a case where the client had paid the national firm six thousand dollars to handle the case.  In this situation we were able to get the client a two level reduction from what they were originally charged with, but it took work!  We were happy to do the work, since we were paid for that work.  This client had been referred to the national law firm by their employee referral service.  Needless to say, they were extremely disappointed that their employer referred them to this national law firm.  

Another well respected local attorney told me of a client who hired him after unsuccessfully hiring a national law firm.  The client went to meet with the attorney who the national law firm referred him to, but found that instead of an office, the attorney was meeting with clients in his mobile home at a trailer park.  

Washington's Rules of Professional Conduct prohibit fee sharing with non-lawyers, as well as lawyers within different firms.  The rule states in part:  

(e) A division of a fee between lawyers who are not in the same firm may be made only if:

(1)(i) the division is in proportion to the services provided by each lawyer or each lawyer
assumes joint responsibility for the representation;

RPC 1.5