How to Find the Best Divorce Lawyer in Boston Massachusetts?  - Boston DIvorce Lawyer | Massachusetts Family Law Attorney

It’s a trick question. You don’t want to identify the best divorce lawyer in Boston, Massachusetts There are lots of divorce lawyers in Boston that would certainly do a just as excellent undertaking for you. It would definitely be impossible to decide which one is the “absolute best.”

The correct concern for you, the Boston divorce buyer, is the way to identify one of those Boston best divorce attorneys at the precise standards of representation and also expense for the facts of your individual case – while avoiding all of the typical, and also sometimes unsafe, mistakes of the Boston divorce lawyer selection choice.

If you understand what those mistakes are (I will inform you in this blog post) and also if you have the proper perspective, namely that you intend to make your Boston divorce lawyer fit your case and also not allow the attorney to force your case to fit his or her inflexible practice profile, then you increase greatly your chances of nailing the Boston divorce lawyer employing choice. Getting you through that decision successfully is the purpose of this blog post.

To begin with, let’s itemize the 4 factors to avoid:

1. Avoid Do-It-Yourself Divorce:

It is entirely possible, repeat POSSIBLE, to download cost-free family law forms from Massachusetts’s judicial council or family court websites. Those cost-free divorce forms will be blank, obviously. You can then attempt to finish and also record the forms at your regional Suffolk County divorce court by yourself without specialist help. This is possible – but extremely improbable, really difficult, confusing, frustrating and also very slow.

DIY divorce would be essentially unattainable, and also not wise even to attempt, in any  complex or contested family law matter. It would be extremely improbable to be effective if you have minor children of the marriage or have any property or financial obligations to be detailed in the case or have custody, visitation or assistance settlements in your proceedings. It would certainly be ill-advised in a case involving domestic physical violence. DIY would also be difficult if you work or if you place any type of value on your own time. Family law documents and also procedures are created by attorneys to confuse you to make sure that you work with – a lawyer.

Please excuse me if I don’t spend excessive time on the do it yourself risk. My experience on the front lines of California divorce for the past 40+ years is that folks that begin the divorce procedure with the intent to attempt to get a totally free divorce are going to  attempt DIY divorce regardless of what. For one reason or another, probably financial, there is nothing I have actually had the ability to uncover to convince them not to.

DIY in Family Law is consistently fake saving. You WILL probably screw it up, and also screwed-up cases are much more perplexing and also really expensive to remedy and also conclude. Do not play this game. The system is created by attorneys to confuse you and also force you to hire a divorce lawyer. There are now cost-effective choices available– see listed below. Do not go it alone in Divorce or Family Law.

 

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

An uncontested divorce is merely one in which the participants will not be challenging any concerns, including the divorce itself. The participants don’t have to be cheerful and also they don’t have to like each other. They are either entirely or mainly in agreement on all concerns and also are wise enough to acknowledge that conventional full-representation divorce attorneys (with massive retainers and also billable hrs) would be the only winners if they contested fairly insignificant concerns in their divorce.

Boston DIvorce Lawyer | Massachusetts Family Law AttorneyConventional full representation by a local Boston divorce lawyer is when that lawyer will represent you in all aspects of your divorce matter. It is extremely likely to be a very good service, but it is expensive.

If you have a disputed matter, a complex matter, a high-value matter or a case that entails domestic violence or the threat of domestic violence, full representation by a Boston divorce lawyer is NOT to be evaded. It is a necessity.

A contested matter denotes that you and also your spouse/partner are disputing ANY issue in the matter. A complex matter contains legal intricacies such as tax concerns, current business concerns, a special needs child of the marriage or any one of many other intricate legal scenarios. A high-value case denotes that your marital estate is large. There is no specific dollar limit. Definitely, if you have a high 7-figure net marital estate or greater, that is a high-value matter.

If you think that you have a disputed,complex or high-value matter, you do. Hire an expert and also high priced Boston divorce lawyer for full traditional representation. Look for a certified Family Law specialist. You will not be sorry you did.

If you do NOT have a disputed, complex, high-value or domestic violence case, you do NOT need traditional full representation by a Boston divorce lawyer. In fact, under those circumstances, full legal representation by a Boston divorce lawyer ends up being a danger to your financial position. Stay clear of it.

Naturally, if you call or email a conventional Boston divorce lawyer, they will not tell you that you do not need their full representation service. In fact, they will attempt to frighten the crap out of you by sharing with you that you definitely need their service which your case will get messed up without it.

That could possibly happen– even in a non-DIY case. I’ll tell you next how to keep away from potentially 90+% of the potential risk of getting your case messed up if you don’t go DIY and you DON’T hire a conventional Boston divorce attorney on a full representation basis.

Your case might likewise potentially get messed up if you DID hire a full representation Boston divorce attorney. That’s likewise not probable, but it could possibly take place.

However, what will DEFINITELY take place if you hire a conventional full representation Boston divorce attorney to handle your uncontested divorce or family law case is that you will get screwed economically. Your case might be dealt with effectively, but you will overbuy needless services and you will pay too much for them.

There’s no need for that to take place anymore. Your parents had few other choices on their family law employing choices. Your grandparents had no other choices. You have many legitimate choices to make your Boston uncontested divorce lawyer employing decision based upon the nature and facts of your case, not upon the BMW payments of Boston divorce attorneys. Read on.

3. Avoid Unqualified Unregulated Online Divorce Mills:

This is by far the greatest threat you face in your employing decision in terms of damage to your future legal and financial security. Non-lawyer online divorce is a substantial market. And it is very unsafe to your legal and financial future.

Online divorce mills use slick sites, wicked-cool divorce computer software, fees lower than MOST attorneys, no legal recommendations, no legal understanding, no professional licensing, no legal education, no code of ethics, no malpractice insurance coverage, no understanding of Suffolk County divorce procedures, no regional understanding about Suffolk County rules of court, regional Suffolk County documents, regional practices or the policies of specific regional judges in the Boston local area and no expert interest in you or your case. And all within a completely unregulated Wild-West market rampant with all type 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– simply prepared Massachusetts divorce forms. Any other services provided are all up-sold on the basis that when they’ve got you hooked, what are you going to do – leave cash already invested? You are at their mercy and you are entirely unguarded. And they realize it!

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

If you choose an online divorce mill, you’ll constantly be contending 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. No one will carry out any type of analysis on your case to secure you and any minor children from future legal or monetary damage. Customer assistance will be awful because it doesn’t have to be anything else. You will never ever have the ability to meet with anybody at an online divorce mill as it is very likely that none of them lie in Boston or perhaps in Massachusetts

If you work with an online divorce mill believing you will save yourself a few dollars and you and your family wind up paying for their mistakes for years, that is NOT a low-cost 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 latest mistake to avoid in your Boston divorce lawyer employing choice.

However, the potential harm here is not huge– nowhere near the damage done routinely 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 work with a Boston divorce attorney you found on a mass-lawyer finder platform, you’re going to pay too much to some extent, depending upon how much the lawyer is paying the lawyer finder platform, but not as severely as if you had employed a conventional full representation Boston family law attorney straight up.

Certainly, you don’t wish to hire a conventional full representation Boston divorce attorney you discover on a mass-lawyer platform. That would compound your over-payment, but the essential factor here is that you don’t wish to hire a conventional full representation Boston divorce attorney to handle your easy uncontested divorce, no matter where you discover that lawyer!!

Boston DIvorce Lawyer | Massachusetts Family Law AttorneyThe risk with employing a Boston divorce attorney that you stumble on ONLY on a mass-lawyer platform is that you’re working with an uninspired Boston divorce attorney– a drone who simply stands in line with all other Boston divorce attorneys and HOPES that s/he will get your trade but does nothing to set apart himself or herself from the Boston lawyer-crowd. That lawyer does nothing to influence you that s/he is the exceptional resolution to your case. You don’t want to have that lawyer.

You wish to have a Boston divorce lawyer who is imaginative, vibrant, unique, classy and business-savvy. In fact, why would you work with a Boston divorce lawyer to look after 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 searching for a divorce lawyer who intentionally sets himself or herself apart from the Boston lawyer-crowd and does NOT blend in by signing up with Avvo and doing nothing else.

Mass-lawyer finder platforms like Avvo are free of cost to sign up with, which is why every divorce lawyer in Suffolk County will have registered. So you ought to not disqualify a Boston divorce lawyer only because s/he has an Avvo account.

However, you ought to not conclude that such a Boston divorce lawyer is really smart or business-savvy either. The issue is that while these mass-lawyer platforms are free of cost for the lawyer to sign up, the lawyer needs to then begin to pay constantly increasing fees on a bid-basis, constantly competing against other regional Suffolk County divorce attorneys, to be seen on the top page of the platform’s website. If that lawyer doesn’t pay more, s/he’ll be on page 3 or 5 of the mass-lawyer website in even a medium-sized town. If that lawyer doesn’t keep bidding up his or her fees, she’ll not get sufficient business to keep up.

It’s a winner-take-all system with the top really few attorneys in each town taking almost all the business– based upon how much advertising fees they can pay– not based upon how great they are or on how they have configured their offerings to match your case. The barrier to that me-too lawyer getting your business is the quantity of cash s/he is prepared to pay to get it, not the quality and skill of his or her service offerings.

If that me-too divorce lawyer in Boston pays more to the mass-lawyer finder platform and keeps paying more, s/he’ll get a highlighted position on the platform’s website and will get more cases, but his or her expenses of acquiring cases will continuously rise while his or her fees are fairly fixed by the flat demand for consumer law services such as divorce.

The Boston divorce lawyer who plays the Avvo pay-to-play scheme will constantly need a growing number of lower profit cases simply to keep up with sales expenses. You don’t want that business-foolishness in someone you will trust with your legal and financial future.

And yes, that lawyer is going to use the very 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 Boston Divorce Lawyer – Boston DIvorce Lawyer | Massachusetts Family Law Attorney

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

So what do you in fact seek in a Boston divorce attorney?

Boston DIvorce Lawyer | Massachusetts Family Law AttorneyBefore I inform you, I wish to set the stage by offering you two exceptional statistics that I did not accept when I initially saw them. These are game-changers in the legal profession and you need to maximize them in your Boston divorce lawyer selection choice:

  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 Boston 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 Boston divorce attorney:

  1. Licensed local Boston divorce attorney (not an unlicensed out-of-state online divorce mill);
  2. Offers unbundled services in uncontested cases– this indicates that you just purchase the legal services your case needs. You will typically do your own filing of docs at court and schedule the service of filed docs on your spouse/partner. The divorce lawyer will examine your docs before they are filed, recognize problem issues in your case and recommend the best choices based upon legal recommendations and regional understanding. If you call a lawyer and inquire about unbundled services and you can tell they don’t understand or don’t want you to understand, simply hang up. They don’t yet get it. Carry on. Do not educate them.
  3. Uses online divorce software that enables you to log into a client portal and enterall of the details in your case.  This not only conserves time and money, but it actually empowers you in your own case. You are the source of all informationin your case. Likewise, there’s no 50-page hard copyone-size-fits-all questionnaire for you to complete in the lawyer’s waiting area.
  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 Boston 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 Boston lawyer-crowd. You’re looking for someone with style who stands out, not melds in. 1-800-DIVORCE is exclusive in Boston. There is only one 1-800-DIVORCE lawyer in Boston. Check here or complete the web form below to see if Boston 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 Boston:

Lowell, Worcester, Providence, Manchester, Hartford, Waterbury, New Haven, Bridgeport, Stamford, Yonkers, Paterson, New York City, Jersey City, Newark, Elizabeth, Edison, Allentown, Syracuse, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D. C., Alexandria, Buffalo, Virginia Beach, Erie, Hampton, Newport News, Norfolk, Chesapeake, Pittsburgh

 

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If you’ve made the difficult personal decision to terminate your marriage or to seek other critical family law relief, you should proceed at your pace and at your comfort level.

So continue to think and please keep us in mind. We know you’ll remember 1-800-DIVORCE.

Remember also that you want a bold competitive divorce lawyer who stands out from the me-too lawyer-crowd. You don’t want a lawyer to look after your legal and economic future if s/he doesn’t even compete and look after his or her own future.

…including emergency orders, disclosure laws, negotiation of settlements and trial work but also in mediation or collaborative law – should your case be suitable for those methods either now or later on.

Non-lawyer online divorce providers only provide the most basic divorce papers. For you to obtain any additional services through a non-lawyer, they would have to make a cold referral to a lawyer in your area.

Why not start off with the best divorce lawyer near me, such as your local 1-800-DIVORCE lawyer, who will already know the facts and issues of your case if additional services become necessary?

Use 1-800-DIVORCE to find the best divorce lawyer near me.

Your local 1-800-DIVORCE lawyer is required to maintain a professional and confidential relationship with you.  S/he is required to handle your case with the highest ethical standards.  S/he is required to take continuing legal education and professional responsibility courses.

Non-lawyer online divorce providers are NOT staffed by lawyers.  They are not licensed or bonded.  They get on-the-job training only! You will have no effective recourse should you be treated dishonestly or incompetently by an online provider.

Search for “online divorce problems” and you will have plenty to read.  Many online providers are truly terrible.  A few are downright fraudulent. If you get caught with a bad one, you will need a lawyer, and much more money, just to get your case sorted.

Don’t take that risk when a local solution exists at a similar cost.  Use 1-800-DIVORCE to find the best divorce lawyer near me.

A non-lawyer online divorce provider will likely be located far away and will be clueless about your state’s laws and your local Rules of Court. Online divorce providers claim to know how to handle divorces in all 3000+ counties in the US – an impossibility.

You can make an appointment to see your local 1-800-DIVORCE lawyer if the need arises. 

If you hire a non-lawyer online divorce provider, it will be the blind leading the blind. And when things go wrong, which they will, you will never get face time with that online provider and you will rarely be able to reach them on the phone or by email. Find a local divorce lawyer. Find the best divorce lawyer near me.

If you hire an unregulated online divorce outfit for $300-$1000 and end up paying for their mistakes forever, that’s NOT a cheap divorce.

Divorce is tough enough already! Don’t go it alone. Find the best  divorce lawyer near me through 1-800-DIVORCE.

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