Legal Question in Family Law in California

Bribery is not at all legal. What if there will be circumstances when the attorney has to leave the case. If your sister can bribe then why not the other party. These are such things which you can't hide for a long. If the case got re-opened in future then your sister has to pay more than she actually has to. So, I would suggest to avoid.

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Ms. Hernandez is completely wrong. She is also not an attorney and is illegally posting answers here.

There is absolutely NOTHING illegal or unethical about an attorney offering to discount their fees to be allowed to withdraw from a case with a client they are having issues with. In fact that would be quite reasonable and normal, since it would compensate the client for having to pay another attorney to get up to speed on the case.

None of the other things you describe are illegal either, nor are they ethical violations as best I can tell. Bad client service, yes. Selfish, probably. Rude and insensitive, most certainly. But illegal or a violation of the ethical obligations between attorney and client? I don't see any.

Offering to reduce fees is HIGHLY ethical. It is a GOOD thing.

"Siding" with the "other side" is often an OBLIGATION of the attorney, in private, when his client needs a dose of reality (which it sounds like your sister may).

As for the "responses." I don't know what the responses are too, but I can assure you that many clients, especially ones having an emotionally difficult time, or who are high strung, or high maintenance can be incredibly frustrating to work with when responses to discovery or motions are due. Sometimes even after explaining over and over what you need, the client gives you - pardon the French - nothing but merde, and it drives you nuts. In the very best of worlds, you simply never let it show and just find a way to get the job done. But in reality sometimes you just have to lay into the client and shove it back on them to deal with the shortcomings, in order to keep your sanity.

The fact of the matter is that it is highly unlikely that the attorney is trying to get fired. Unless he has a VERY unusual retainer agreement, it says he can just quit, as long as he does not jeopardize her case by quitting a few days before a hearing or trial or something like that. The attorney/client relationship is a very personal one, all the more so in Family Law. So both need to have the right to get out if the relationship is not working out. Lawyers are people too, and we are not obligated to work for people we can't work with effectively and without bringing great unpleasantness into our lives. As a profession we bring your unpleasantness into our lives and try to solve it for you. That is tough enough. When the relationship with the client becomes a new source of unpleasantness on TOP of the unpleasantness of the case, it sometimes becomes too much to deal with. Attorneys are not obligated to keep working for clients once that happens.

The bottom line, though, is that if he wanted out of the case, he probably would just get out. Which brings me to your last question. Does it matter who's responsible for the break-down in the attorney/client relationship? Damned straight it does. If your sister is the source of the break-down in the attorney/client relationship, he has a right to quit, whether she fires him or not, and he may well do so if she is the problem and doesn't change that.