How to Find the Best Divorce Lawyer in Kansas City Kansas?  - Kansas City DIvorce Lawyer | Kansas Family Law Attorney

It’s a trick question. You do not want to find the very best divorce attorney in Kansas City, Kansas There are many divorce lawyers in Kansas City that would certainly do an equally very good effort for you. It would be impossible to establish which one is the “absolute best.”

The actual question for you, the Kansas City divorce client, is the way to choose one of those Kansas City top-notch divorce attorneys at the appropriate levels of assistance and price for the aspects of your particular circumstances – while staying away from all of the common, and in some cases dangerous, pitfalls of the Kansas City divorce lawyer selection choice.

If you know what those pitfalls are (I will inform you in this post) and if you have the correct attitude, namely that you intend to make your Kansas City divorce lawyer fit your instance and not enable the attorney to force your instance to fit his or her rigid practice profile, after that you enhance greatly your chances of nailing the Kansas City divorce lawyer hiring choice. Getting you through that selection effectively is the goal of this post.

To start with, let’s list the 4 traits to keep away from:

1. Avoid Do-It-Yourself Divorce:

It is feasible, repeat POSSIBLE, to download totally free family law documents from Kansas’s judicial council or family court web sites. Those totally free divorce documents will be blank, obviously. You can at that point try to finish and file the documents at your regional Wyandotte County divorce court on your own without expert help. This is possible – nevertheless extremely unlikely, extremely difficult, complex, irritating and very slow.

Do it yourself divorce would certainly be essentially unfeasible, and not sensible even to attempt, in any type of  complicated or contested family law matter. It would certainly be extremely unlikely to be effective if you have minor children of the marital relationship or have any type of assets or financial debts to be detailed in the case or have custody, visitation or assistance agreements in your proceedings. It would certainly be risky in a case involving domestic physical violence. Do it yourself would certainly likewise be difficult if you work or if you place any type of worth on your own time. Family law documents and procedures are developed by attorneys to puzzle you to make sure that you hire – a lawyer.

Please excuse me if I do not invest excessive time on the do it yourself threat. My experience on the cutting edge of California divorce for the past 40+ years is that people that begin the divorce process with the intent to try to obtain a totally free divorce are most likely to  try Do-It-Yourself divorce no matter what. For some reason, possibly financial, there is absolutely nothing I‘ve had the ability to discover to persuade them not to.

Do It Yourself in Family Law is consistently fake economy. You WILL almost certainly screw it up, and screwed-up proceedings are far more troublesome and really expensive to correct and finalize. Do not play this game. The system is developed by attorneys to puzzle you and force you to hire a divorce lawyer. There are now economical choices available– see listed below. Do not go it alone in Divorce or Family Law.

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

An uncontested divorce is just one in which the litigants will not be disputing any type of problems, including the divorce itself. The litigants do not need to be happy and they do not need to care for each other. They are either entirely or generally in agreement on all problems and are sensible enough to acknowledge that conventional full-representation divorce attorneys (with huge retainers and billable hrs) would certainly be the only victors if they contested fairly trivial problems in their divorce.

Standard complete representation by a local Kansas City divorce lawyer is when that lawyer will represent you in all facets of your divorce case. It is extremely likely to be an excellent service, yet it is very costly.

If you have a disputed case, a complicated case, a high-value case or a case that entails domestic violence or the threat of domestic violence, complete representation by a Kansas City divorce lawyer is NOT to be evaded. It is a necessity.

A disputed case means that you and your spouse/partner are contesting ANY issue in the case. A complicated case has legal intricacies such as tax problems, active business problems, a special needs child of the marital relationship or any one of countless other complicated legal situations. A high-value case means that your marital estate is huge. There is no particular 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,complicated or high-value case, you do. Work with an expert and high priced Kansas City divorce lawyer for complete conventional representation. Try to find 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 conventional complete representation by a Kansas City divorce lawyer. In fact, under those conditions, complete legal representation by a Kansas City divorce lawyer becomes a risk to your financial position. Avoid it.

Of course, if you call or email a conventional Kansas City divorce lawyer, they will not tell you that you do not need their complete representation service. In fact, they will try to frighten the crap out of you by telling you that you undeniably need to have their service and that your case will get screwed up without it.

That could well come to pass– even in a non-DIY case. I’ll inform you next how to stay away from perhaps 90+% of the possible threat of getting your case screwed up if you do not go DIY and you DON’T hire a conventional Kansas City divorce attorney on a complete representation basis.

Your case could also perhaps get screwed up if you DID hire a complete representation Kansas City divorce attorney. That’s also not likely, however it could happen.

However, what will DEFINITELY happen if you hire a conventional complete representation Kansas City divorce attorney to handle your uncontested divorce or family law case is that you will get screwed economically. Your case may be managed extremely well, however you will overbuy unnecessary services and you will overpay for them.

There’s no need for that to happen any longer. Your parents had few other choices on their family law hiring choices. Your grandparents had no other choices. You have many legitimate choices to make your Kansas City uncontested divorce lawyer hiring selection based upon the nature and truths of your case, not upon the BMW payments of Kansas City divorce attorneys. Read on.

3. Avoid Unqualified Unregulated Online Divorce Mills:

This is by far the most significant threat you deal with in your hiring selection in terms of damage to your future legal and financial security. Non-lawyer online divorce is a huge market. And it is very dangerous to your legal and financial future.

Online divorce mills offer slick sites, wicked-cool divorce software, fees lower than MOST attorneys, no legal suggestions, no legal understanding, no professional licensing, no legal education, no code of ethics, no malpractice insurance coverage, no understanding of Wyandotte County divorce policies, no regional understanding about Wyandotte County guidelines of court, regional Wyandotte County documents, regional practices or the policies of individual regional judges in the Kansas City area and no expert interest in you or your case. And all within an entirely unregulated Wild-West market widespread with all type of incompetence, price fraud, and up-selling.

Online divorce mill fees average about $300, however what you get for that $300 charge is remarkably little– simply prepared Kansas 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 – leave cash already invested? You are at their mercy and you are entirely vulnerable. And they know it!

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

If you choose an online divorce mill, you’ll always be dealing with low-level, inexperienced, indifferent, high turn-over staff, call center staff members and folks in India, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Mexico or some other state. Nobody will carry out any kind of analysis on your case to protect you and any minor children from future legal or financial damage. Client assistance will be terrible because it does not need to be anything else. You will never be able to meet anybody at an online divorce mill as it is most likely that none lie in Kansas City or even in Kansas

If you hire an online divorce mill thinking you will save yourself a few dollars and you and your household end up spending for their mistakes for several years, that is NOT a low-cost 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 keep away from in your Kansas City divorce lawyer hiring choice.

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 hire a Kansas City divorce attorney you found on a mass-lawyer finder platform, you’re going to overpay to some extent, depending on how much the lawyer is paying the lawyer finder platform, however not as terribly as if you had hired a conventional complete representation Kansas City family law attorney directly.

Certainly, you do not want to hire a conventional complete representation Kansas City divorce attorney you find on a mass-lawyer platform. That would intensify your over-payment, however the crucial aspect here is that you do not want to hire a conventional complete representation Kansas City divorce attorney to handle your basic uncontested divorce, no matter where you find that lawyer!!

The threat with hiring a Kansas City divorce attorney that you find ONLY on a mass-lawyer platform is that you’re working with an average Kansas City divorce attorney– a drone who simply stands in line with all other Kansas City divorce attorneys and HOPES that s/he will get your business however does nothing to set apart himself or herself from the Kansas City lawyer-crowd. That lawyer does nothing to persuade you that s/he is the unequalled resolution to your case. You do not wish to have that lawyer.

You want a Kansas City divorce lawyer who is innovative, vibrant, distinct, stylish and business-savvy. In fact, why would you hire a Kansas City divorce lawyer to safeguard 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 purposefully sets himself or herself apart from the Kansas City lawyer-crowd and does NOT blend in by signing up with Avvo and not doing anything else.

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

However, you need to not consider that such a Kansas City divorce lawyer is extremely wise or business-savvy either. The problem is that while these mass-lawyer platforms are completely free for the lawyer to join, the lawyer will need to then begin to pay continually increasing fees on a bid-basis, always contending versus other regional Wyandotte County divorce attorneys, 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 or her fees, she’ll not get adequate cases to keep up.

It’s a winner-take-all system with the top extremely few attorneys in each town taking almost all cases– based upon how much marketing 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 case 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 Kansas City 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 clients, however his or her costs of getting cases will continuously increase while his or her fees are fairly set by the flat demand for consumer law services such as divorce.

The Kansas City divorce lawyer who plays the Avvo pay-to-play game will always need more and more lower revenue cases simply to keep up with sales costs. You do not desire that business-foolishness in someone you will trust with your legal and financial future.

And yes, that lawyer is going to utilize 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 Kansas City Divorce Lawyer – Kansas City DIvorce Lawyer | Kansas Family Law Attorney

So above are 4 concerns to stay away from: do it yourself divorce, traditional full-service lawyer representation in basic uncontested cases, unlicensed and unregulated online divorce mills and boring me-too drone attorneys who are really bad at law practice business.

So what do you actually try to find in a Kansas City divorce attorney?

Before I inform you, I want to set the stage by providing you two 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 make the most of them in your Kansas City 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 Kansas City 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 Kansas City divorce attorney:

1. Licensed local Kansas City divorce attorney (not an unlicensed out-of-state online divorce mill);
2. Offers unbundled services in uncontested cases– this suggests that you only purchase the legal services your case needs. You will usually 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 submitted to court, identify problem concerns in your case and recommend the best choices 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 desire you to know, simply hang up. They do not yet get it. Carry on. Do not inform them.
3. Uses online divorce software that enables you to log into a client portal and inputall of the data in your case.  This not only conserves money and time, 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 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 Kansas City 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 Kansas City lawyer-crowd. You’re looking for someone with style who stands out, not melds in. 1-800-DIVORCE is exclusive in Kansas City. There is only one 1-800-DIVORCE lawyer in Kansas City. Check here or complete the web form below to see if Kansas City has a 1-800-DIVORCE.

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