Schwartz Kalina, PLLC

Schwartz Kalina, PLLC is a law firm in Leesburg, Virginia that handles family law, criminal and traffic defense, personal injury, and civil mediation for clients across Loudoun County, Fairfax County, and the surrounding Northern Virginia area. The family law side is where the site puts most of its weight: divorce, child custody, child support, spousal support, and equitable distribution, with mediation offered as a separate track for couples who want to avoid a contested fight in court. That range tells you Schwartz Kalina, PLLC is built around domestic relations first, with other practice areas rounding it out.

Attorneys' credentials and litigation background

The two attorneys are named and described in solid detail. Peter J. Schwartz brings more than twenty years of litigation across domestic relations, criminal defense, and personal injury, so the criminal and traffic work is not a bolt-on afterthought. Kristen M. Kalina has about a decade in family law and holds a Virginia Supreme Court Certified Mediator credential, which gives the mediation service real standing instead of a generic label. A court-certified mediator on staff is a specific, checkable fact, and it separates a firm that lists mediation from one equipped to run it under the state's rules.

Range of practice areas covered

On the criminal and traffic front, the coverage spans felony and misdemeanor cases through to ordinary traffic violations, which is a wide spread for a two-attorney practice. Personal injury rounds it out with car accidents, slip and falls, and negligence claims. There is also legal malpractice and fee-dispute representation, a narrower niche that most general family firms skip, so its presence at Schwartz Kalina, PLLC points to attorneys who are comfortable taking cases against other lawyers. The firm advertises "35 Years of Combined Litigation Experience," and while combined-experience math always inflates a bit, the underlying resumes behind it are laid out plainly enough that the number does not feel hollow.

Free consultation lowers the barrier

The free initial phone consultation is worth flagging because it lowers the cost of a first conversation to nothing, which for someone facing a custody dispute or a criminal charge is not a small thing. A person weighing whether to even hire counsel can call Schwartz Kalina, PLLC, describe the situation, and get a read before any money changes hands. A fee on that first call tends to scare off the anxious, uncertain people who most need to talk something through, and Schwartz Kalina, PLLC does not put one there.

BBB listing shows address discrepancy

Schwartz Kalina, PLLC turns up on the Better Business Bureau, though not as an accredited business, and the BBB entry lists a Market Street address that differs from the Edwards Ferry Road suite shown on the firm's own site. Small address mismatches like that are common when a firm relocates or when a directory pulls an older record, but it is the sort of discrepancy a careful reader will notice and want to ask about. The BBB page carries a "Write a Review" prompt but no aggregate rating, so it confirms the firm exists without saying anything about how clients rate it.

A Yelp business page exists but shows no visible rating or review count in what surfaces from a search. Several attorney directories, statebarattorneys.com, ReachAttorneys, HG.org, and Local-Attorneys among them, carry positive client-praise excerpts, yet none of them surface a numeric rating or a countable volume of reviews. Excerpted praise like that deserves some caution, since directory blurbs are often self-supplied or lightly moderated, which is not the same as a stack of independent star ratings to weigh against each other. No aggregate score from Google, Trustpilot, or Facebook came up in a search at all, so there is no single public business directory or review site that anchors a track record here the way a large Google review count would.

None of that is damning. Plenty of competent small firms live mostly on word of mouth and referrals from past clients, and the absence of a big review pile is not evidence of poor work. It does mean a prospective client has less outside evidence to lean on than they would with a firm carrying two hundred Google reviews, so more of the vetting at Schwartz Kalina, PLLC falls back on the free consultation and on the attorneys' stated credentials, which at least are concrete.

Comparing contact transparency across attorneys

Where the firm does well is contact transparency. Schwartz Kalina, PLLC lists separate direct phone lines for both Peter Schwartz and Kristen Kalina, includes a fax number, and publishes a full street address at Suite 100 on Edwards Ferry Road in Leesburg. For a law office, that openness counts. A prospective client knows where the firm sits, knows which attorney they are calling, and is not funneled through an anonymous intake form with no human name attached. That is the baseline a legal client should expect, and this firm clears it comfortably.

Putting it together, Schwartz Kalina, PLLC reads as a legitimate, appropriately specialized local practice with a genuine family-law core, a properly certified mediator, and a lawyer whose litigation background spans criminal and injury work as well. The soft spot is the reputation record, which is scattered across directories without a hard public rating to anchor it, and a stray address inconsistency worth clearing up on the first call. The strengths are specific and the weaknesses are the ordinary ones of a small firm rather than red flags.

For a family, criminal, or injury matter in Loudoun County, a named two-attorney firm with a court-certified mediator and a free first call has a genuine case to make against a bigger office with a louder online rating but a longer roster of strangers. What the public record cannot do here is confirm that case with numbers; the reputation evidence on hand is scattered directory mentions and no aggregate score, so a client leans harder on the credentials and the free consultation than they would with a firm that had a deep review history behind it.