How to Find the Best Divorce Lawyer in Costa Mesa California?  - Costa Mesa DIvorce Lawyer | California Family Law Attorney

It’s a trick question. You do not want to get the very best divorce attorney in Costa Mesa, California There are many divorce attorneys in Costa Mesa that would likely do an every bit as fine effort for you. It would be inconceivable to decide on which one is the “best.”

The real issue for you, the Costa Mesa divorce buyer, is just how to discover one of those Costa Mesa top divorce lawyers at the precise standards of assistance and also price for the aspects of your unique situation – while avoiding all of the typical, and also in some cases harmful, challenges of the Costa Mesa divorce lawyer selection choice.

If you know what those challenges are (I will tell you in this post) and also if you have the correct attitude, specifically that you want to make your Costa Mesa divorce lawyer fit your case and also not allow the lawyer to require your case to fit his/her inflexible practice profile, then you increase considerably your opportunities of nailing the Costa Mesa divorce lawyer employing choice. Getting you through that decision successfully is the purpose of this blog post.

To begin with, let’s note the 4 aspects to stay away from:

1. Avoid Do-It-Yourself Divorce:

It is feasible, repeat POSSIBLE, to download cost-free family law forms from California’s judicial council or family court web sites. Those cost-free divorce forms will be uncompleted, obviously. You can then attempt to finish and also record the forms at your local Orange County divorce court by yourself without specialist help. This is feasible – nevertheless very unlikely, extremely challenging, complicated, aggravating and also exceptionally time-consuming.

DIY divorce would be essentially impossible, and also not sensible even to try, in any  complex or disputed family law matter. It would be very unlikely to be effective if you have minor children of the marriage or have any property or financial debts to be itemized in the case or have custody, visitation or support settlements in your matter. It would certainly be reckless in a matter including domestic violence. DIY would likewise be difficult if you have a job or if you put any kind of worth on your own time. Family law forms and also processeses are developed by lawyers to confuse you so that you work with – an attorney.

Please excuse me if I do not spend excessive time on the DIY risk. My experience on the front lines of California divorce for the past 40+ years is that individuals that begin the divorce procedure with the intent to attempt to get a totally free divorce are going to  attempt DIY divorce no matter what. For one reason or another, most likely financial, there is nothing I‘ve had the ability to find to convince them not to.

DIY in Family Law is typically false affordability. You WILL almost certainly screw it up, and also screwed-up cases are much more challenging and also really expensive to remedy and also conclude. Don’t play this game. The system is developed by lawyers to confuse you and also require you to hire a divorce lawyer. There are now cost-effective choices offered– see listed below. Don’t go it alone in Divorce or Family Law.

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

An uncontested divorce is simply one in which the participants will not be challenging any problems, including the divorce itself. The participants do not need to be happy and also they do not need to like each other. They are either totally or generally in agreement on all problems and also are sensible enough to understand that standard full-representation divorce lawyers (with substantial retainers and also billable hrs) would be the only victors if they disputed fairly insignificant problems in their divorce.

Conventional full representation by a regional Costa Mesa divorce lawyer is when that lawyer will represent you in all aspects of your divorce litigation. It is very likely to be an excellent professional service, yet it is high priced.

If you have a contested matter, a complicated matter, a high-value matter or a matter that involves domestic violence or the threat of domestic violence, full representation by a Costa Mesa divorce lawyer is NOT to be evaded. It is a requirement.

A contested matter denotes that you and also your spouse/partner are contesting ANY issue in the matter. A complex matter includes legal intricacies such as tax problems, current business problems, a special needs child of the marriage or any one of many additional complicated legal scenarios. A high-value case denotes that your marital estate is huge. There is no particular dollar limit. Certainly, if you have a high 7-figure net marital estate or greater, that is a high-value matter.

If you suspect that you have a contested,complicated or high-value matter, you do. Hire an experienced and also high priced Costa Mesa divorce lawyer for full conventional representation. Look for a certified Family Law specialist. You will not be sorry you did.

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

Obviously, if you call or email a traditional Costa Mesa divorce lawyer, they will not tell you that you do not require their full representation service. In fact, they will attempt to scare the crap out of you by advising you that you completely need their service which your case will get screwed up without it.

That might happen– even in a non-DIY case. I’ll tell you next how to stay away from potentially 90+% of the potential risk of getting your case screwed up if you do not go DIY and you DON’T hire a traditional Costa Mesa divorce lawyer on a complete representation basis.

Your case could likewise potentially get screwed up if you DID hire a complete representation Costa Mesa divorce lawyer. That’s likewise not probable, but it could occur.

Nevertheless, what will DEFINITELY occur if you hire a traditional full representation Costa Mesa divorce lawyer to manage your uncontested divorce or family law case is that you will get screwed economically. Your case might be managed very well, but you will overbuy excessive services and you will pay too much for them.

There’s no requirement for that to occur nowadays. Your parents had few other choices on their family law employing decisions. Your grandparents had no other choices. You have many valid choices to make your Costa Mesa uncontested divorce lawyer employing decision based upon the nature and truths of your case, not upon the BMW payments of Costa Mesa divorce lawyers. Continue reading.

3. Avoid Unqualified Unregulated Online Divorce Mills:

This is by far the most significant risk you deal with in your employing decision in terms of damage to your future legal and financial safety. Non-lawyer online divorce is a substantial industry. And it is exceptionally harmful to your legal and financial future.

Online divorce mills provide slick websites, wicked-cool divorce software, costs lower than MOST lawyers, no legal guidance, no legal understanding, no professional licensing, no legal education, no code of ethics, no malpractice insurance coverage, no understanding of Orange County divorce procedures, no local understanding about Orange County guidelines of court, local Orange County forms, local practices or the policies of individual local judges in the Costa Mesa local area and no professional interest in you or your case. And all within a totally unregulated Wild-West industry widespread with all sort of incompetence, price scams, and up-selling.

Online divorce mill costs average about $300, but what you get for that $300 fee is incredibly little– just prepared California divorce forms. Any other services supplied are all up-sold on the basis that when they’ve got you hooked, what are you going to do – walk away from money already invested? You are at their mercy and you are totally vulnerable. And they know it!

See the Online Divorce Association of America’s website for a great overview of just some of the more common scams and up-sells to be found in the online divorce industry.

If you employ an online divorce mill, you’ll always be dealing with low-level, inexperienced, indifferent, high turn-over staff, call center workers 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 support will be terrible because it does not need to be anything else. You will never ever have the ability to consult with anybody at an online divorce mill as it is very likely that none of them lie in Costa Mesa and even in California

If you work with an online divorce mill thinking you will conserve yourself a few dollars and you and your family wind up spending for their errors 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 stay away from in your Costa Mesa divorce lawyer employing choice.

Nevertheless, the potential damage here is not significant– nowhere near the damage done regularly 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 work with a Costa Mesa divorce lawyer you found on a mass-lawyer finder platform, you’re going to pay too much to some extent, depending upon just how much the lawyer is paying the lawyer finder platform, but not as severely as if you had actually employed a traditional full representation Costa Mesa family law lawyer directly.

Obviously, you do not want to hire a traditional full representation Costa Mesa divorce lawyer you discover on a mass-lawyer platform. That would intensify your over-payment, but the crucial element here is that you do not want to hire a traditional full representation Costa Mesa divorce lawyer to manage your easy uncontested divorce, no matter where you discover that lawyer!!

The risk with employing a Costa Mesa divorce lawyer that you find ONLY on a mass-lawyer platform is that you’re working with a run-of-the-mill Costa Mesa divorce lawyer– a drone who just stands in line with all other Costa Mesa divorce lawyers and HOPES that s/he will get your business but does nothing to distinguish himself or herself from the Costa Mesa lawyer-crowd. That lawyer does nothing to influence you that s/he is the best solution to your case. You do not wish to have that lawyer.

You want to have a Costa Mesa divorce lawyer who is creative, bold, distinct, stylish and business-savvy. In fact, why would you work with a Costa Mesa divorce lawyer to take care of your own legal and financial interests when s/he does not even look after his/her own business interests aggressively and decisively? You’re searching for a divorce lawyer who purposefully sets himself or herself apart from the Costa Mesa lawyer-crowd and does NOT blend in by joining Avvo and not doing anything else.

Mass-lawyer finder platforms like Avvo are free of charge to sign up with, which is why every divorce lawyer in Orange County will have registered. So you should not disqualify a Costa Mesa divorce lawyer just because s/he has an Avvo account.

Nevertheless, you should not conclude that such a Costa Mesa divorce lawyer is extremely effective or business-savvy either. The problem is that while these mass-lawyer platforms are free of charge for the lawyer to join, the lawyer will need to then begin to pay constantly increasing costs on a bid-basis, always battling versus other local Orange County divorce lawyers, to be seen on the top page of the platform’s website. If that lawyer does not pay extra, s/he’ll be on page 3 or 5 of the mass-lawyer website in even a medium-sized town. If that lawyer does not keep bidding up his/her costs, she’ll not get sufficient cases to stay in business.

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

If that me-too divorce lawyer in Costa Mesa 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/her costs of doing business will continuously increase while his/her costs are fairly fixed by the flat need for consumer law services such as divorce.

The Costa Mesa divorce lawyer who plays the Avvo pay-to-play scheme will always require more and more lower profit cases just to keep up with sales costs. You do not want that business-foolishness in someone you will trust with your legal and financial future.

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

How to Find the Best Costa Mesa Divorce Lawyer – Costa Mesa DIvorce Lawyer | California Family Law Attorney

So above are 4 things to stay away from: DIY divorce, conventional full-service lawyer representation in easy uncontested cases, unlicensed and unregulated online divorce mills and boring me-too drone lawyers who are truly bad at business.

So what do you actually try to find in a Costa Mesa divorce lawyer?

Before I tell you, I want to set the stage by offering you two amazing statistics that I did not presume true when I first saw them. These are game-changers in the legal profession and you really need to maximize them in your Costa Mesa divorce lawyer employing 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 Costa Mesa 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 Costa Mesa divorce attorney:

1. Licensed local Costa Mesa divorce attorney (not an unlicensed out-of-state online divorce mill);
2. Offers unbundled services in uncontested cases– this indicates that you just buy the legal services your case actually requires. You will usually do your own filing of docs at court and arrange for 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 choices based upon legal guidance and local understanding. If you call a lawyer and inquire 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. Move on. Don’t educate them.
3. Uses online divorce software that allows you to log into a client portal and inputall of the personal data in your case.  This not only saves money and time, but it actually empowers you in your own case. You are the source of all datain 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 Costa Mesa 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 Costa Mesa lawyer-crowd. You’re looking for someone with style who stands out, not melds in. 1-800-DIVORCE is exclusive in Costa Mesa. There is only one 1-800-DIVORCE lawyer in Costa Mesa. Check here or complete the web form below to see if Costa Mesa 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 Costa Mesa:

Orange, Anaheim, Fullerton, Long Beach, Norwalk, Downey, Corona, Torrance, West Covina, Pomona, El Monte, Ontario, Inglewood, Los Angeles, Riverside, Rancho Cucamonga, Pasadena, Murrieta, Fontana, Burbank, Oceanside, Moreno Valley, Rialto, Temecula, Carlsbad, San Bernardino, Escondido, Santa Clarita, Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley