How to Find the Best Divorce Lawyer in Columbus Georgia?  - Best Affordable Divorce Lawyer near Columbus

It’s a trick question. You do not need to identify the best divorce attorney in Columbus, Georgia There are numerous divorce lawyers in Columbus who would do an equally great effort for you. It would undoubtedly be impracticable to ascertain which one is the “very best.”

The correct question for you, the Columbus divorce client, is exactly how to identify just one of those Columbus top-notch divorce lawyers at the correct levels of representation as well as expense for the realities of your specific situation – while steering clear of every one of the common, as well as in some cases unsafe, pitfalls of the Columbus divorce lawyer hiring decision.

If you understand what those pitfalls are (I will inform you in this blog post) as well as if you have the proper mindset, namely that you intend to make your Columbus divorce lawyer fit your case as well as not enable the attorney to force your case to fit his or her inflexible practice profile, after that you boost significantly your opportunities of nailing the Columbus divorce lawyer hiring decision. Getting you through that choice efficiently is the objective of this blog post.

To begin with, let’s list the 4 things to avoid:

1. Avoid Do-It-Yourself Divorce:

It is feasible, repeat POSSIBLE, to download free family law documents from Georgia’s judicial council or family court internet sites. Those free divorce documents are going to be blank, of course. You can then attempt to finish as well as record the documents at your local Muscogee County divorce court by yourself without expert aid. This is possible – but very unlikely, extremely difficult, complex, frustrating as well as extremely time-consuming.

DIY divorce would certainly be essentially unachievable, as well as not sensible even to try, in any  complicated or disputed family law action. It would certainly be very unlikely to be effective if you have minor children of the marriage or have any property or debts to be specified in case or have custody, visitation or assistance settlements in your proceedings. It would definitely be risky in a matter entailing domestic physical violence. DIY would certainly also be difficult if you work or if you place any kind of worth on your own time. Family law documents as well as procedures are developed by lawyers to puzzle you to make sure that you employ – a lawyer.

Please excuse me if I do not invest way too much time on the DIY risk. My experience on the cutting edge of California divorce for the past 40+ years is that people who begin the divorce process with the intent to attempt to obtain a cost-free divorce are most likely to  attempt Do-It-Yourself divorce no matter what. Somehow, most likely economic, there is nothing I‘ve had the ability to discover to persuade them not to.

DIY in Family Law is typically fake saving. You WILL probably screw it up, as well as screwed-up proceedings are far more problematic as well as very expensive to remedy as well as conclude. Do not play this game. The system is developed by lawyers to puzzle you as well as force you to hire a divorce lawyer. There are currently economical alternatives readily available– see below. Do not go it alone in Divorce or Family Law.

2. Avoid Traditional Columbus 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 problems, including the divorce itself. The parties do not need to be pleased as well as they do not need to like each other. They are either entirely or mostly in agreement on all problems as well as are sensible enough to realize that traditional full-representation divorce lawyers (with big retainers as well as billable hours) would certainly be the only winners if they disputed fairly unimportant problems in their divorce.

Standard full representation by a regional Columbus divorce lawyer is when that lawyer will represent you in all parts of your divorce case. It is very likely to be a very good professional service, yet it is really expensive.

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

A contested case signifies that you as well as your spouse/partner are contesting ANY issue in the case. A complicated case consists of legal intricacies such as tax problems, active business problems, a special needs child of the marriage or any one of countless additional intricate legal scenarios. 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 case.

If you suspect that you have a disputed,complex or high-value case, you do. Employ an expert as well as expensive Columbus 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 require traditional full representation by a Columbus divorce lawyer. In fact, under those circumstances, full legal representation by a Columbus divorce lawyer ends up being a danger to your economic position. Stay clear of it.

Obviously, if you call or email a traditional Columbus divorce lawyer, they will not tell you that you do not require their full representation service. In fact, they will attempt to terrify the crap out of you by telling you that you undeniably need their service and that your case will get screwed up without it.

That could come to pass– even in a non-DIY case. I’ll share with you next how to steer clear of potentially 90+% of the possible risk of getting your case screwed up if you do not go DIY and you DON’T hire a traditional Columbus divorce attorney on a full representation basis.

Your case might likewise potentially get screwed up if you DID hire a full representation Columbus divorce attorney. That’s likewise not likely, however it could take place.

However, what will DEFINITELY take place if you hire a traditional full representation Columbus divorce attorney to manage your uncontested divorce or family law case is that you will get screwed financially. Your case may be handled effectively, however you will overbuy unnecessary services and you will overpay for them.

There’s no requirement for that to take place anymore. Your parents had few other alternatives on their family law hiring choices. Your grandparents had no other alternatives. You have many legitimate alternatives to make your Columbus uncontested divorce lawyer hiring choice based upon the nature and truths of your case, not upon the BMW payments of Columbus divorce lawyers. Read on.

3. Avoid Unqualified Unregulated Online Divorce Mills:

This is by far the most significant danger you are confronted by in your hiring choice in terms of damage to your future legal and economic security. Non-lawyer online divorce is a big market. And it is extremely unsafe to your legal and economic future.

Online divorce mills use slick sites, wicked-cool divorce software application, costs lower than MOST lawyers, no legal guidance, no legal knowledge, no professional licensing, no legal education, no code of ethics, no malpractice insurance coverage, no knowledge of Muscogee County divorce policies, no local knowledge about Muscogee County rules of court, local Muscogee County documents, local practices or the policies of individual local judges in the Columbus local area and no professional interest in you or your case. And all within a completely uncontrolled Wild-West market rampant with all sort of incompetence, price fraud, and up-selling.

Online divorce mill costs average about $300, however what you get for that $300 fee is remarkably little– simply prepared Georgia divorce documents. Any other services supplied are all up-sold on the basis that as soon as they’ve got you hooked, what are you going to do – leave money already spent? You are at their mercy and you are entirely vulnerable. And they recognize it!

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

If you hire an online divorce mill, you’ll always be contending with low-level, untrained, disinterested, high turn-over personnel, 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 protect you and any minor children from future legal or financial damage. Customer assistance will be awful due to the fact that it doesn’t need to be anything else. You will never ever be able to consult with anyone at an online divorce mill as it is highly likely that none are located in Columbus or even in Georgia

If you employ an online divorce mill believing you will save yourself a few dollars and you and your household wind up paying for their errors for many years, that is NOT an inexpensive divorce!

4. Avoid Me-Too Lawyer Advertising Platforms:

Me-Too Lawyer Advertising Platforms are online lawyer directory sites like Avvo, FindLaw, LegalZoom, Justia, Google Screened, Google Business Profile (formerly GMB) and now even Yelp. This is the most recent risk to avoid in your Columbus divorce lawyer hiring decision.

However, the possible harm here is not big– nowhere near the damage done routinely by non-lawyer online divorce mills or undoubtedly the damage likely to be done by you to your own case with DIY divorce.

If you employ a Columbus divorce attorney you found on a mass-lawyer finder platform, you’re going to overpay to some extent, depending upon how much the lawyer is paying the lawyer finder platform, however not as severely as if you had employed a traditional full representation Columbus family law attorney straight up.

Certainly, you do not wish to hire a traditional full representation Columbus divorce attorney you discover on a mass-lawyer platform. That would compound your over-payment, however the essential aspect here is that you do not wish to hire a traditional full representation Columbus divorce attorney to manage your basic uncontested divorce, no matter where you discover that lawyer!!

The risk with hiring a Columbus divorce attorney that you discover ONLY on a mass-lawyer platform is that you’re working with a humdrum Columbus divorce attorney– a drone who simply stands in line with all other Columbus divorce lawyers and HOPES that s/he will get your trade however does nothing to set apart himself or herself from the Columbus lawyer-crowd. That lawyer does nothing to persuade you that s/he is the standout resolution to your case. You do not want to have that lawyer.

You wish to have a Columbus divorce lawyer who is imaginative, bold, distinct, classy and business-savvy. In fact, why would you employ a Columbus divorce lawyer to look after your own legal and economic interests when s/he does not even care for his or her own business interests aggressively and decisively? You’re trying to find a divorce lawyer who purposefully sets himself or herself apart from the Columbus lawyer-crowd and does NOT blend in by joining Avvo and not doing anything else.

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

However, you ought to not conclude that such a Columbus divorce lawyer is extremely effective or business-savvy either. The issue is that while these mass-lawyer platforms are totally free for the lawyer to join, the lawyer needs to then begin to pay constantly increasing costs on a bid-basis, always contending against other local Muscogee County divorce lawyers, to be seen on the top page of the platform’s site. If that lawyer doesn’t 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 doesn’t keep bidding up his or her costs, she’ll not get sufficient clients to keep up.

It’s a winner-take-all system with the top extremely few lawyers in each town taking almost all the business– based upon how much advertising costs they can pay– not based upon how excellent they are or on how they have configured their offerings to suit your case. The barrier to that me-too lawyer getting your business is the quantity of money 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 Columbus pays more to the mass-lawyer finder company and keeps paying more, s/he’ll get a featured position on the platform’s site and will get more cases, however his or her costs of getting business will continuously rise while his or her costs are fairly set by the flat demand for consumer law services such as divorce.

The Columbus divorce lawyer who plays the Avvo pay-to-play scheme will always require a growing number of lower profit cases simply to stay on top of sales costs. You do not want that business-foolishness in somebody you will rely on with your legal and economic future.

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

How to Find the Best Columbus Divorce Lawyer – Best Affordable Divorce Lawyer near Columbus

So above are 4 factors to stay away from: DIY divorce, old-fashioned full-service lawyer representation in basic uncontested cases, unlicensed and uncontrolled online divorce mills and boring me-too drone lawyers who are actually bad at business.

So what do you in fact try to find in a Columbus divorce attorney?

Before I inform you, I wish to set the stage by offering you 2 exceptional stats that I did not believe when I first saw them. These are game-changers in the legal profession and you really need to take full advantage of them in your Columbus 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 Columbus 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 Columbus divorce attorney:

1. Licensed local Columbus divorce attorney (not an unlicensed out-of-state online divorce mill);
2. Offers unbundled services in uncontested cases– this denotes that you only pay for the legal services your case actually requires. 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 review your docs before they are submitted to court, identify problem issues in your case and recommend the very best alternatives based upon legal guidance and local knowledge. 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, simply hang up. They do not yet get it. Carry on. Do not educate them.
3. Uses online divorce software that allows you to log into a client portal and inputall of the data in your case.  This not only saves money and time, but it literally empowers you in your own case. You are the source of all informationin your case. Likewise, there’s no 50-page paper 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 Columbus 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 Columbus lawyer-crowd. You’re looking for someone with style who stands out, not melds in. 1-800-DIVORCE is exclusive in Columbus. There is only one 1-800-DIVORCE lawyer in Columbus. Check here or complete the web form below to see if Columbus 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 Columbus:

Montgomery, Macon, Atlanta, Sandy Springs, Birmingham, Athens, Tallahassee, Chattanooga, Huntsville, Augusta, Mobile, Savannah, Jacksonville, Murfreesboro, Knoxville, Gainesville, Nashville, North Charleston, Charleston, Jackson, Charlotte, Clarksville, Clearwater, Memphis, Orlando, Tampa, New Orleans, Saint Petersburg, Lakeland, Winston-Salem