How to Find the Best Divorce Lawyer in Garden Grove California?  - Family Law Attorneys Garden Grove - Divorce Attorney Garden Grove California

It’s a trick question. You don’t need to get the absolute best divorce lawyer in Garden Grove, California There are lots of divorce attorneys in Garden Grove who would likely do an equally great undertaking for you. It would undoubtedly be impossible to decide which one is the “very best.”

The real issue for you, the Garden Grove divorce consumer, is how to find one of those Garden Grove best divorce lawyers at the proper levels of representation and cost for the aspects of your particular scenario – while steering clear of all of the typical, and occasionally hazardous, mistakes of the Garden Grove divorce lawyer selection choice.

If you understand what those mistakes are (I will tell you in this post) and if you have the appropriate mindset, specifically that you want to make your Garden Grove divorce lawyer fit your case and not enable the lawyer to force your case to fit his or her rigid practice profile, after that you boost substantially your possibilities of nailing the Garden Grove divorce lawyer hiring choice. Getting you through that choice efficiently is the objective of this article.

To start with, let’s note the 4 factors to keep away from:

1. Avoid Do-It-Yourself Divorce:

It is possible, repeat POSSIBLE, to download totally free family law documents from California’s judicial council or family court internet sites. Those totally free divorce documents are going to be blank, obviously. You can then attempt to complete and submit the documents at your regional Orange County divorce court on your own without expert assistance. This is feasible – but very improbable, extremely challenging, complex, discouraging and extremely slow.

Do it yourself divorce would be essentially unfeasible, and not wise even to attempt, in any  complicated or contended family law action. It would be very improbable to be a success if you have minor children of the marital relationship or have any property or financial obligations to be detailed in the case or have custody, visitation or support arrangements in your proceedings. It would definitely be reckless in a case including domestic physical violence. Do it yourself would also be hard if you work or if you put any sort of value on your own time. Family law forms and procedures are designed by lawyers to confuse you so that you hire – a lawyer.

Please excuse me if I don’t invest way too much time on the do it yourself threat. My experience on the front lines of California divorce for the past 40+ years is that people who begin the divorce procedure with the intent to attempt to get a free divorce are going to  attempt DIY divorce whatever. Somehow, possibly financial, there is nothing I‘ve had the ability to uncover to convince them not to.

Do It Yourself in Family Law is typically fake saving. You WILL almost certainly screw it up, and screwed-up cases are a lot more difficult and really expensive to remedy and complete. Do not play this game. The system is designed by lawyers to confuse you and force you to hire a divorce lawyer. There are now affordable choices offered– see below. Do not go it alone in Divorce or Family Law.

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

An uncontested divorce is simply one in which the parties will not be challenging any concerns, including the divorce itself. The parties don’t have to be happy and they don’t have to care for each other. They are either entirely or generally in agreement on all concerns and are wise enough to understand that traditional full-representation divorce lawyers (with big retainers and billable hours) would be the only victors if they contended reasonably insignificant concerns in their divorce.

Conventional complete representation by a regional Garden Grove divorce lawyer is when that lawyer will represent you in all aspects of your divorce matter. It is very likely to be a good professional service, but it is very expensive.

If you have a contested case, a complicated case, a high-value case or a case that involves domestic violence or the threat of domestic violence, complete representation by a Garden Grove divorce lawyer is NOT to be avoided. It is a necessity.

A contested case means that you and your spouse/partner are disputing ANY issue in the case. A complex case consists of legal complexities such as tax concerns, current business concerns, a special needs child of the marital relationship or any one of countless additional complex legal scenarios. A high-value case denotes that your marital estate is large. There is no particular dollar limit. Definitely, if you have a high 7-figure net marital estate or greater, that is a high-value case.

If you suspect that you have a contested,complex or high-value case, you do. Work with an expert and expensive Garden Grove divorce lawyer for complete traditional 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 need traditional complete representation by a Garden Grove divorce lawyer. In fact, under those conditions, complete legal representation by a Garden Grove divorce lawyer becomes a threat to your financial position. Stay clear of it.

Naturally, if you call or email a conventional Garden Grove divorce lawyer, they will not tell you that you do not need their complete representation service. In fact, they will attempt to scare the crap out of you by informing you that you absolutely are in need of their service and that 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 stay clear of potentially 90+% of the prospective threat of getting your case messed up if you don’t go DIY and you DON’T hire a conventional Garden Grove divorce lawyer on a complete representation basis.

Your case could also potentially get messed up if you DID hire a complete representation Garden Grove divorce lawyer. That’s also not likely, however it could possibly happen.

However, what will DEFINITELY happen if you hire a conventional complete representation Garden Grove divorce lawyer to handle your uncontested divorce or family law case is that you will get screwed financially. Your case might be managed extremely well, however you will overbuy unneeded services and you will overpay for them.

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

3. Avoid Unqualified Unregulated Online Divorce Mills:

This is by far the biggest risk you deal with in your hiring choice in terms of damage to your future legal and financial safety. Non-lawyer online divorce is a substantial market. And it is extremely hazardous to your legal and financial future.

Online divorce mills use slick websites, wicked-cool divorce software applications, fees lower than MOST lawyers, no legal advice, 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 regional understanding about Orange County guidelines of court, regional Orange County forms, regional practices or the policies of individual regional judges in the Garden Grove region and no professional interest in you or your case. And all within a totally unregulated Wild-West market rampant with all kinds of incompetence, price fraud, and up-selling.

Online divorce mill fees average about $300, however what you get for that $300 fee is extremely little– simply prepared California divorce documents. Any other services delivered are all up-sold on the basis that when they’ve got you hooked, what are you going to do – ignore cash already invested? You are at their mercy and you are entirely unprotected. And they know it!

See the Online Divorce Association of America’s site for a very good review of merely a few 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 constantly be contending with low-level, inexperienced, disinterested, high turn-over personnel, call center staff members and folks in India, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Mexico or some other state. Nobody will perform any type of analysis on your case to protect you and any minor children from future legal or financial damage. Customer support will be awful due to the fact that it does not have to be anything else. You will never be able to consult with anyone at an online divorce mill as it is highly likely that none are located in Garden Grove or even in California

If you hire an online divorce mill thinking you will save yourself a few dollars and you and your family end up spending for their mistakes for years, that is NOT a cheap 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 mistake to keep away from in your Garden Grove divorce lawyer hiring choice.

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

If you hire a Garden Grove divorce lawyer 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 actually hired a conventional complete representation Garden Grove family law lawyer directly.

Clearly, you don’t want to hire a conventional complete representation Garden Grove divorce lawyer you discover on a mass-lawyer platform. That would compound your over-payment, however the important factor here is that you don’t want to hire a conventional complete representation Garden Grove divorce lawyer to handle your easy uncontested divorce, no matter where you discover that lawyer!!

The threat with hiring a Garden Grove divorce lawyer that you find ONLY on a mass-lawyer platform is that you’re employing a mediocre Garden Grove divorce lawyer– a drone who simply stands in line with all other Garden Grove divorce lawyers and HOPES that s/he will get your trade however does nothing to distinguish himself or herself from the Garden Grove lawyer-crowd. That lawyer does nothing to influence you that s/he is the unique solution to your case. You don’t wish to have that lawyer.

You want to have a Garden Grove divorce lawyer who is imaginative, vibrant, unique, classy and business-savvy. In fact, why would you hire a Garden Grove divorce lawyer to care for your own legal and financial interests when s/he does not even look after 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 Garden Grove lawyer-crowd and does NOT blend in by joining Avvo and doing nothing else.

Mass-lawyer finder platforms like Avvo are completely free to join, which is why every divorce lawyer in Orange County will have signed up. So you should not disqualify a Garden Grove divorce lawyer just because s/he has an Avvo account.

However, you should not expect that such a Garden Grove divorce lawyer is extremely effective or business-savvy either. The problem is that while these mass-lawyer platforms are completely free for the lawyer to register with, the lawyer needs to then begin to pay constantly increasing fees on a bid-basis, constantly battling against other regional Orange 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 business to stay in business.

It’s a winner-take-all system with the leading extremely few lawyers in each town taking almost all the business– based on how much advertising fees they can pay– not based on how excellent they are or on how they have actually configured their offerings to suit your case. The barrier to that me-too lawyer getting your trade is the quantity of cash 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 Garden Grove 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 acquiring cases will continuously increase while his or her fees are reasonably fixed by the flat demand for consumer law services such as divorce.

The Garden Grove divorce lawyer who plays the Avvo pay-to-play scheme will constantly need increasingly more lower revenue cases simply to keep up with sales costs. You don’t desire that business-foolishness in someone you will trust with your legal and financial future.

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

How to Find the Best Garden Grove Divorce Lawyer – Family Law Attorneys Garden Grove - Divorce Attorney Garden Grove California

So above are 4 concerns to avoid: do it yourself divorce, traditional full-service lawyer representation in easy uncontested cases, unlicensed and unregulated online divorce mills and uninspiring me-too drone lawyers who are truly bad at law practice business.

So what do you in fact look for in a Garden Grove divorce lawyer?

Before I tell you, I want to set the stage by offering you 2 remarkable stats that I did not accept when I initially saw them. These are game-changers in the legal profession and you need to take full advantage of them in your Garden Grove divorce lawyer hiring 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 Garden Grove 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 Garden Grove divorce attorney:

1. Licensed local Garden Grove divorce attorney (not an unlicensed out-of-state online divorce mill);
2. Offers unbundled services in uncontested cases– this signifies that you just purchase 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 examine your docs before they are filed, identify problem concerns in your case and suggest the very best choices based upon legal advice and regional understanding. If you call a lawyer and inquire about unbundled services and you can see that they don’t understand or don’t desire you to understand, simply hang up. They don’t yet get it. Move on. Do not inform them.
3. Uses online divorce software that enables you to log into a client portal and inputall of the details in your case.  This not only conserves money and time, but it in fact empowers you in your own case. You are the source of all datain your case. Likewise, there’s no 50-page hard 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 Garden Grove 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 Garden Grove lawyer-crowd. You’re looking for someone with style who stands out, not melds in. 1-800-DIVORCE is exclusive in Garden Grove. There is only one 1-800-DIVORCE lawyer in Garden Grove. Check here or complete the web form below to see if Garden Grove has a 1-800-DIVORCE.

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