How to Find the Best Divorce Lawyer in Antioch California?  - Divorce & Family Law in Antioch

It’s a trick question. You do not need to get the very best divorce lawyer in Antioch, California There are numerous divorce lawyers in Antioch that would do an every bit as excellent effort for you. It would undoubtedly be impracticable to figure out which one is the “best.”

The actual concern for you, the Antioch divorce buyer, is how to discover just one of those Antioch best divorce lawyers at the right levels of assistance as well as cost for the facts of your specific scenario – while staying away from all of the typical, as well as sometimes dangerous, challenges of the Antioch divorce lawyer selection decision.

If you understand what those challenges are (I will certainly tell you in this article) as well as if you have the appropriate perspective, namely that you want to make your Antioch divorce lawyer fit your case as well as not permit the lawyer to require your case to fit his or her inflexible practice profile, after that you enhance significantly your possibilities of nailing the Antioch divorce lawyer employing decision. Getting you through that selection successfully is the purpose of this article.

Initially, let’s mention the 4 traits to stay away from:

1. Avoid Do-It-Yourself Divorce:

It is entirely possible, repeat POSSIBLE, to download free family law forms from California’s judicial council or family court websites. Those free divorce forms will be blank, of course. You can at that point try to complete as well as file the forms at your neighborhood Contra Costa County divorce court on your own without specialist aid. This is feasible – nevertheless highly improbable, very challenging, complex, aggravating as well as very lengthy.

DIY divorce would certainly be essentially out of the question, as well as not sensible even to try, in any kind of  complicated or disputed family law proceedings. It would certainly be highly improbable to be successful if you have minor children of the marriage or have any kind of assets or financial obligations to be itemized in the event or have custody, visitation or assistance settlements in your case. It would certainly be ill-advised in a matter entailing domestic physical violence. DIY would certainly likewise be tough if you have a job or if you place any kind of value on your own time. Family law documents as well as processeses are made by lawyers to perplex you to ensure that you hire – an attorney.

Please excuse me if I do not invest too much time on the do it yourself threat. My experience on the cutting edge of California divorce for the past 40+ years is that folks that start the divorce process with the intent to try to obtain a free divorce are going to  try DIY divorce no matter what. For some reason, most likely financial, there is absolutely nothing I have actually been able to uncover to convince them not to.

DIY in Family Law is consistently fake affordability. You WILL probably screw it up, as well as screwed-up matters are much more perplexing as well as expensive to deal with as well as complete. Do not play this game. The system is made by lawyers to perplex you as well as require you to hire a divorce lawyer. There are now affordable alternatives offered– see listed below. Do not go it alone in Divorce or Family Law.

2. Avoid Traditional Antioch Family Law Attorneys if Your Case is Likely to be Uncontested:

An uncontested divorce is merely one in which the parties will not be contesting any kind of issues, including the divorce itself. The parties do not have to be happy as well as they do not have to care for each other. They are either entirely or mainly in agreement on all issues as well as are sensible enough to recognize that traditional full-representation divorce lawyers (with massive retainers as well as billable hours) would certainly be the only winners if they disputed relatively unimportant issues in their divorce.

Standard full representation by a neighborhood Antioch divorce lawyer is when that lawyer will represent you in all parts of your divorce case. It is highly likely to be a good professional service, but it is very expensive.

If you have a disputed matter, a complicated matter, a high-value matter or a matter that includes domestic violence or the threat of domestic violence, full representation by a Antioch divorce lawyer is NOT to be refrained from. It is a prerequisite.

A contested matter denotes that you as well as your spouse/partner are disputing ANY issue in the matter. A complex matter consists of legal intricacies such as tax issues, current business issues, a special needs child of the marriage or any one of countless additional complicated legal situations. A high-value case denotes that your marital estate is huge. There is no specific dollar limit. Certainly, if you have a high 7-figure net marital estate or higher, that is a high-value matter.

If you think that you have a disputed,complex or high-value matter, you do. Work with an expert as well as expensive Antioch divorce lawyer for full conventional representation. Search for a certified Family Law specialist. You will certainly not be sorry you did.

If you do NOT have a disputed, complex, high-value or domestic violence case, you do NOT need conventional full representation by a Antioch divorce lawyer. In fact, under those conditions, full legal representation by a Antioch divorce lawyer ends up being a threat to your financial position. Avoid it.

Obviously, if you call or email a conventional Antioch divorce lawyer, they will not tell you that you do not need their full representation service. In fact, they will try to scare the crap out of you by advising you that you definitely are in need of their service and that your case will get messed up without it.

That could well transpire– even in a non-DIY case. I’ll tell you next how to avoid perhaps 90+% of the prospective threat of getting your case messed up if you do not go DIY and you DON’T hire a conventional Antioch divorce lawyer on a full representation basis.

Your case might also perhaps get messed up if you DID hire a full representation Antioch divorce lawyer. That’s also not probable, but it could occur.

However, what will DEFINITELY occur if you hire a conventional full representation Antioch divorce lawyer to manage your uncontested divorce or family law case is that you will get screwed financially. Your case may be dealt with effectively, but you will overbuy unneeded services and you will pay too much for them.

There’s no requirement for that to occur any longer. Your mothers and fathers had few other alternatives on their family law employing options. Your grandparents had no other alternatives. You have many legitimate alternatives to make your Antioch uncontested divorce lawyer employing selection based upon the nature and facts of your case, not upon the BMW payments of Antioch divorce lawyers. Continue reading.

3. Avoid Unqualified Unregulated Online Divorce Mills:

This is without a doubt the most significant risk you face in your employing selection in terms of damage to your future legal and financial safety. Non-lawyer online divorce is a huge market. And it is very dangerous to your legal and financial future.

Online divorce mills provide slick websites, wicked-cool divorce software applications, fees lower than MOST lawyers, no legal suggestions, no legal understanding, no professional licensing, no legal education, no code of principles, no malpractice insurance, no understanding of Contra Costa County divorce policies, no regional understanding about Contra Costa County rules of court, regional Contra Costa County documents, regional practices or the policies of individual regional judges in the Antioch region and no professional interest in you or your case. And all within a totally unregulated Wild-West market rampant with all sort of incompetence, price scams, and up-selling.

Online divorce mill fees average about $300, but what you get for that $300 fee is extremely little– just prepared California divorce forms. Any other services provided are all up-sold on the basis that as soon as they’ve got you hooked, what are you going to do – ignore money already invested? You are at their whim and you are entirely unprotected. And they recognize it!

See the Online Divorce Association of America’s site for a good analysis of just some of the more common frauds and up-sells to be found in the online divorce market.

If you employ an online divorce mill, you’ll constantly be dealing with low-level, untrained, indifferent, high turn-over staff, call center employees and folks in India, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Mexico or some other state. Nobody will conduct any type of analysis on your case to secure you and any minor children from future legal or financial damage. Customer assistance will be horrible since it does not have to be anything else. You will never have the ability to meet with anybody at an online divorce mill as it is highly likely that none are located in Antioch or perhaps in California

If you hire an online divorce mill believing you will conserve yourself a few dollars and you and your family wind up spending for their errors for years, that is NOT an inexpensive divorce!

4. Avoid Me-Too Lawyer Advertising Platforms:

Me-Too Lawyer Advertising Platforms are online lawyer directories like Avvo, FindLaw, LegalZoom, Justia, Google Screened, Google Business Profile (formerly GMB) and now even Yelp. This is the most recent risk to stay away from in your Antioch divorce lawyer employing decision.

However, the prospective harm here is not massive– nowhere near the damage done regularly by non-lawyer online divorce mills or indeed the damage likely to be done by you to your own case with DIY divorce.

If you hire a Antioch divorce lawyer you found on a mass-lawyer finder platform, you’re going to pay too much to some extent, depending on just how much the lawyer is paying the lawyer finder platform, but not as terribly as if you had hired a conventional full representation Antioch family law lawyer straight up.

Obviously, you do not want to hire a conventional full representation Antioch divorce lawyer you find on a mass-lawyer platform. That would intensify your over-payment, but the essential factor here is that you do not want to hire a conventional full representation Antioch divorce lawyer to manage your basic uncontested divorce, no matter where you find that lawyer!!

The threat with employing a Antioch divorce lawyer that you discover ONLY on a mass-lawyer platform is that you’re working with an average Antioch divorce lawyer– a drone who just stands in line with all other Antioch divorce lawyers and HOPES that s/he will get your business but does nothing to set apart himself or herself from the Antioch lawyer-crowd. That lawyer does nothing to influence you that s/he is the one-of-a-kind solution to your case. You do not want to have that lawyer.

You would like a Antioch divorce lawyer who is innovative, strong, one-of-a-kind, classy and business-savvy. In fact, why would you hire a Antioch divorce lawyer to take care of your own legal and financial interests when s/he does not even take care of his or her own business interests strongly and decisively? You’re trying to find a divorce lawyer who intentionally sets himself or herself apart from the Antioch lawyer-crowd and does NOT blend in by joining Avvo and doing nothing else.

Mass-lawyer finder platforms like Avvo are totally free to join, which is why every divorce lawyer in Contra Costa County will have joined. So you should not disqualify a Antioch divorce lawyer only because s/he has an Avvo account.

However, you should not consider that such a Antioch divorce lawyer is very effective or business-savvy either. The issue is that while these mass-lawyer platforms are totally free for the lawyer to enroll in, the lawyer must then start to pay continuously increasing fees on a bid-basis, constantly contending against other regional Contra Costa County divorce lawyers, to be seen on the leading page of the platform’s site. If that lawyer does not pay extra, s/he’ll be on page 3 or 5 of the mass-lawyer site in even a medium-sized town. If that lawyer does not keep bidding up his or her fees, she’ll not get enough trade to stay in business.

It’s a winner-take-all system with the leading very few lawyers in each town taking almost all clients– based upon just how much advertising fees they can pay– not based upon how excellent they are or on how they have actually configured their offerings to fit your case. The barrier to that me-too lawyer getting your trade is the quantity of money s/he is prepared to pay to get it, not the quality and distinctiveness of his or her service offerings.

If that me-too divorce lawyer in Antioch pays more to the mass-lawyer finder company and keeps paying more, s/he’ll get a highlighted position on the platform’s site and will get more sales, but his or her costs of getting cases will continuously rise while his or her fees are relatively set by the flat need for consumer law services such as divorce.

The Antioch divorce lawyer who plays the Avvo pay-to-play game will constantly need increasingly more lower revenue cases just to keep up with business costs. You do not want that business-foolishness in somebody you will trust with your legal and financial future.

And yes, that lawyer is going to utilize the exact same brain to take care of your case as s/he utilized to screw his or her own business into the ground.

How to Find the Best Antioch Divorce Lawyer – Divorce & Family Law in Antioch

So above are 4 situations to stay away from: do it yourself divorce, old-fashioned full-service lawyer representation in basic uncontested cases, unlicensed and unregulated online divorce mills and lackluster me-too drone lawyers who are actually bad at the business of law practice.

So what do you actually look for in a Antioch divorce lawyer?

Before I tell you, I want to set the stage by giving you two exceptional data that I did not presume true when I initially saw them. These are game-changers in the legal profession and you need to maximize them in your Antioch divorce lawyer selection decision:

1. There is a glut of lawyers on the market and it’s serious. According to the ABA National Lawyer Population Survey, in 2017, the whole legal profession lost some 1400 jobs while almost 20,000 brand new lawyers have been added – just in 2017. And the ABA has just certified a huge new law school down in Texas. And this has been trending for years. And all of this surplus of supply while the demand for legal services has been flat or, as in the case of family law, diminishing because of DIY divorce and the overwhelming success of fraudulent and incompetent online divorce mills (both caused by the Internet).
2. From 1988 to 2012, the average solo lawyer practitioner’s yearly income, after adjusting for inflation, dropped from $70,747 to $49,130. Read that last sentence again. This is based on published data from the IRS compiled from solo lawyer practitioner tax returns for the years specified. The legal profession is in serious economic decline. More so in areas of consumer law, like uncontested divorce, where the Internet has reduced the knowledge gap between lawyers and consumers.

What to Look For:

Business-savvy lawyers who want to participate in the divorce industry are under considerable price and business-model pressure right now. Take advantage! You want to hire a Antioch divorce lawyer who has responded to this professional crisis in the following ways.

You want as many of the following factors as you can find in one Antioch divorce attorney:

1. Licensed local Antioch divorce attorney (not an unlicensed out-of-state online divorce mill);
2. Offers unbundled services in uncontested cases– this signifies that you just buy the legal services your case needs. You will normally do your own filing of docs at court and schedule the service of filed docs on your spouse/partner. The divorce lawyer will review your docs before they are filed, determine problem concerns in your case and recommend the very best alternatives based upon legal suggestions and regional understanding. If you call a lawyer and ask about unbundled services and you can tell they do not know or do not want you to know, just hang up. They do not yet get it. Carry on. Do not inform them.
3. Uses online divorce software that allows you to log into a client portal and enterall of the personal data in your case.  This not only saves money and time, but it in fact empowers you in your own case. You are the source of all informationin your case. Also, there’s no 50-page paper copyone-size-fits-all questionnaire for you to complete in the lawyer’s waiting room.
4. Uses other cloud-based software and apps – listen for buzz phrases like “client portal” and “virtual law practice.” Ask about e-filing and listen closely to determine if the lawyer even knows what it is.
5. Doesn’t have a fancy office in a downtown high-rise or across from the courthouse. You don’t want to pay those rents. This is even more so during C-19. You’re looking for a lawyer in a strip mall or even one who works at home and has one or more shared office arrangements for client meetings. Don’t use a lawyer who has obviously big expenses – YOU pay them!
6. Look for a competitive edge. Look for a lawyer who understands what is going on around him or her in his or her chosen profession. The practice of law is legal education, knowledge and experience attached to a business model. If you call a lawyer and ask about unbundled services or online divorce interviews and they act like law practice is ONLY a noble profession and not a competitive business, hang up. Don’t educate them. They don’t yet get it.
7. Specialization – You don’t want to hire a lawyer who is a jack-of-all-trades on the basis that s/he might get hired for something. There are many different areas of law practice. They are very different from each other. Specialization is the name of the game today. Look at the lawyer’s website. It will tell you whether s/he is trying to get work in numerous areas of practice. It doesn’t matter if the lawyer handles maybe 2 areas of law, particularly if they are both areas of consumer law, such as divorce and bankruptcy. However, if you see that the primary practice area is DUI or personal injury or criminal law and family law appears to be an add-on, move on. Don’t explain.  Just move on. They do not handle enough family law to be any good.  They use family law as an unwanted add-on.  They will not be experienced enough and they will have to charge you a lot because you will be one of very few family law clients. Also, personal injury law paydays are huge and criminal law cases are critical to someone’s personal freedom. Where do you think your family law case will fit into that lawyer’s busy day?
8. Look for a spark – You are looking for a lawyer who has positioned himself or herself in such a way as to convince you that s/he is the unique local divorce lawyer in Antioch that is best suited to resolving your case and your specific problems. This is hard to define, but you will understand if that lawyer makes this connection with you. If there is no such spark on the first exposure, there never will be. Move on.
9. Look for Unique Action – Obviously, this does not involve ONLY standing in line with every other lawyer at Avvo or similar me-too lawyer platforms. Avvo owns all of that attorney’s blog posts and may control his or her entire marketing outreach. Avvo takes money from that lawyer in order to sign up more lawyers in Antioch lawyer-crowd. You’re looking for someone with style who stands out, not melds in. 1-800-DIVORCE is exclusive in Antioch. There is only one 1-800-DIVORCE lawyer in Antioch. Check here or complete the web form below to see if Antioch has a 1-800-DIVORCE.

Divorce and Other Family Law Services Are Available Through 1-800-DIVORCE in Most Medium to Large Cities, Including the Following Cities, As Well As in Antioch:

Concord, Fairfield, Vallejo, Berkeley, Hayward, Stockton, Oakland, Richmond, Elk Grove, San Francisco, Daly City, San Mateo, Sacramento, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, San Jose, Modesto, Santa Rosa, Roseville, Salinas, Clovis, Fresno, Reno, Visalia, Santa Maria, Bakersfield, Ventura, Oxnard, Lancaster, Simi Valley