How to Find the Best Divorce Lawyer in Long Beach California?  - Best Long Beach, California Divorce Attorney Los Angeles County

It’s a trick question. You do not need to identify the very best divorce lawyer or attorney in Long Beach, California There are many divorce lawyers in Long Beach that would do an equally very good job for you. It would be impossible to ascertain which one is the “best.”

The correct issue for you, the Long Beach divorce consumer, is precisely how to discover just one of those Long Beach top divorce lawyers at the ideal levels of assistance and cost for the facts of your particular circumstances – while steering clear of every one of the usual, and often unsafe, challenges of the Long Beach divorce attorney hiring choice.

If you know what those challenges are (I will certainly advise you in this blog post) and if you have the correct perspective, particularly that you wish to make your Long Beach divorce attorney fit your situation and not permit the attorney to force your situation to fit his or her rigid practice profile, then you increase substantially your opportunities of nailing the Long Beach divorce attorney hiring choice. Getting you through that choice effectively is the goal of this post.

Initially, let’s mention the 4 traits to stay away from:

1. Avoid Do-It-Yourself Divorce:

It is possible, repeat POSSIBLE, to download free family law forms from California’s judicial council or family court websites. Those free divorce forms are going to be blank, obviously. You can then try to finish and file the forms at your neighborhood Los Angeles County divorce court on your own without expert assistance. This is feasible – nevertheless extremely improbable, very challenging, complicated, irritating and exceptionally lengthy.

DIY divorce would certainly be effectively impossible, and not wise even to try, in any kind of  complex or contested family law matter. It would certainly be extremely improbable to be a success if you have minor children of the marriage or have any kind of assets or financial debts to be listed in the case or have custody, visitation or support agreements in your matter. It would absolutely be risky in a case including domestic violence. DIY would certainly additionally be tough if you work or if you position any kind of value on your own time. Family law forms and procedures are developed by lawyers to confuse you to make sure that you hire – an attorney.

Please excuse me if I do not spend excessive time on the do it yourself danger. My experience on the front lines of California divorce for the past 40+ years is that people that start the divorce process with the intent to try to obtain a free divorce are going to  try DIY divorce regardless of what. For some reason, probably economic, there is nothing I have actually had the ability to uncover to convince them not to.

Do It Yourself in Family Law is typically fake affordability. You WILL almost certainly screw it up, and screwed-up proceedings are a lot more perplexing and really expensive to remedy and finalize. Do not play this game. The system is developed by lawyers to confuse you and force you to hire a divorce attorney. There are now cost-effective choices available– see below. Do not go it alone in Divorce or Family Law.

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

An uncontested divorce is merely one in which the litigants will not be challenging any kind of problems, including the divorce itself. The litigants do not have to be pleased and they do not have to care for each other. They are either completely or mostly in agreement on all problems and are wise enough to acknowledge that conventional full-representation divorce lawyers (with significant retainers and billable hrs) would certainly be the only winners if they contested fairly inconsequential problems in their divorce.

Conventional full representation by a regional Long Beach divorce attorney is when that attorney will represent you in all parts of your divorce litigation. It is extremely likely to be an excellent professional service, but it is very costly.

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

A disputed matter indicates that you and your spouse/partner are disputing ANY issue in the matter. A complex matter includes legal intricacies such as tax problems, active business problems, a special needs child of the marriage or any one of countless other intricate legal situations. A high-value case indicates that your marital estate is very 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 matter.

If you suspect that you have a disputed,complicated or high-value matter, you do. Work with an experienced and expensive Long Beach divorce attorney for full traditional representation. Seek a certified Family Law specialist. You will certainly 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 Long Beach divorce attorney. In fact, under those conditions, full legal representation by a Long Beach divorce attorney becomes a risk to your economic position. Steer clear of it.

Obviously, if you call or email a traditional Long Beach divorce attorney, they will not tell you that you do not need their full representation service. In fact, they will try to frighten the crap out of you by informing you that you definitely need their service and that your case will get messed up without it.

That could occur– even in a non-DIY case. I’ll advise you next how to keep away from perhaps 90+% of the prospective danger of getting your case messed up if you do not go DIY and you DON’T hire a traditional Long Beach divorce attorney on a full representation basis.

Your case could also perhaps get messed up if you DID hire a full representation Long Beach divorce attorney. That’s also not likely, but it could possibly happen.

Nevertheless, what will DEFINITELY happen if you hire a traditional full representation Long Beach divorce attorney to handle your uncontested divorce or family law case is that you will get screwed financially. Your case might be managed extremely well, but you will overbuy excessive services and you will overpay for them.

There’s no need for that to happen nowadays. Your mothers and fathers had few other choices on their family law hiring options. Your grandparents had no other choices. You have numerous valid choices to make your Long Beach uncontested divorce attorney hiring choice based upon the nature and facts of your case, not upon the BMW payments of Long Beach divorce lawyers. Read on.

3. Avoid Unqualified Unregulated Online Divorce Mills:

This is without a doubt the greatest danger you are confronted by in your hiring choice in regards to damage to your future legal and economic safety. Non-lawyer online divorce is a substantial market. And it is exceptionally unsafe to your legal and economic future.

Online divorce mills use slick sites, wicked-cool divorce software applications, charges lower than MOST lawyers, no legal advice, no legal knowledge, no professional licensing, no legal education, no code of principles, no malpractice insurance, no knowledge of Los Angeles County divorce procedures, no regional knowledge about Los Angeles County rules of court, regional Los Angeles County forms, regional practices or the policies of individual regional judges in the Long Beach area and no expert 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 charges average about $300, but what you get for that $300 fee is incredibly little– just prepared California divorce forms. Any other services delivered are all up-sold on the basis that as soon as they’ve got you hooked, what are you going to do – leave cash already invested? You are at their whim and you are completely unprotected. And they recognize it!

See the Online Divorce Association of America’s site for a very good overview of merely some of the more common scams and up-sells to be discovered in the online divorce market.

If you choose an online divorce mill, you’ll constantly be dealing with low-level, inexperienced, indifferent, high turn-over personnel, call center staff members and folks in India, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Mexico or some other state. No one will carry out any kind of analysis on your case to protect you and any minor children from future legal or monetary damage. Customer support will be awful since it doesn’t have to be anything else. You will never ever have the ability to meet with anyone at an online divorce mill as it is likely that none of them are located in Long Beach or even in California

If you hire an online divorce mill thinking you will save yourself a few dollars and you and your family wind up spending for their mistakes for several years, that is NOT an inexpensive 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 pitfall to stay away from in your Long Beach divorce lawyer hiring choice.

Nevertheless, the prospective harm here is not massive– nowhere near the damage done consistently 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 Long Beach divorce attorney you found on a mass-lawyer finder platform, you’re going to overpay to some extent, depending on just how much the lawyer is paying the lawyer finder platform, but not as terribly as if you had actually employed a traditional full representation Long Beach family law attorney straight up.

Obviously, you do not want to hire a traditional full representation Long Beach divorce attorney you discover on a mass-lawyer platform. That would compound your over-payment, but the crucial aspect here is that you do not want to hire a traditional full representation Long Beach divorce attorney to handle your simple uncontested divorce, no matter where you discover that lawyer!!

The danger with hiring a Long Beach divorce attorney that you discover ONLY on a mass-lawyer platform is that you’re hiring a mediocre Long Beach divorce attorney– a drone who just stands in line with all other Long Beach divorce lawyers and HOPES that s/he will get your trade but does nothing to differentiate himself or herself from the Long Beach lawyer-crowd. That lawyer does nothing to convince you that s/he is the unique solution to your case. You do not wish to have that lawyer.

You wish to have a Long Beach divorce lawyer who is innovative, bold, unique, classy and business-savvy. In fact, why would you hire a Long Beach divorce lawyer to take care of your own legal and economic interests when s/he does not even look after his or her own law practice interests strongly and decisively? You’re trying to find a divorce lawyer who purposefully sets himself or herself apart from the Long Beach lawyer-crowd and does NOT blend in by signing up with Avvo and doing nothing else.

Mass-lawyer finder platforms like Avvo are free to join, which is why every divorce lawyer in Los Angeles County will have joined. So you should not disqualify a Long Beach divorce lawyer only because s/he has an Avvo account.

Nevertheless, you should not consider that such a Long Beach divorce lawyer is very effective or business-savvy either. The issue is that while these mass-lawyer platforms are free for the lawyer to enroll in, the lawyer will need to then start to pay continuously increasing charges on a bid-basis, constantly contending against other regional Los Angeles County divorce lawyers, to be seen on the leading page of the platform’s site. If that lawyer doesn’t pay more, 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 charges, she’ll not get enough trade to keep up.

It’s a winner-take-all system with the leading very few lawyers in each town taking almost all the business– based upon just how much advertising charges they can pay– not based upon how good they are or on how they have actually configured their offerings to fit your case. The barrier to that me-too lawyer getting your business is the amount 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 Long Beach pays more to the mass-lawyer finder platform and keeps paying more, s/he’ll get a featured position on the platform’s site and will get more cases, but his or her costs of working will continuously increase while his or her charges are fairly set by the flat need for consumer law services such as divorce.

The Long Beach divorce lawyer who plays the Avvo pay-to-play scheme will constantly need more and more lower revenue cases just to keep up with sales costs. You do not desire that business-foolishness in someone you will trust with your legal and economic 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 or her own law practice into the ground.

How to Find the Best Long Beach Divorce Lawyer – Best Long Beach, California Divorce Attorney Los Angeles County

So above are 4 problems to keep clear of: do it yourself divorce, old-fashioned full-service lawyer representation in simple uncontested cases, unlicensed and unregulated online divorce mills and boring me-too drone lawyers who are actually bad at law practice business.

So what do you actually try to find in a Long Beach divorce attorney?

Before I advise you, I want to set the stage by offering you two amazing 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 Long Beach 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 Long Beach 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 Long Beach divorce attorney:

1. Licensed local Long Beach divorce attorney (not an unlicensed out-of-state online divorce mill);
2. Offers unbundled services in uncontested cases– this signifies that you only purchase the legal services your case actually requires. You will generally 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, determine problem concerns in your case and suggest the very best choices based upon legal advice and regional knowledge. If you call a lawyer and ask about unbundled services and you can see that they do not understand or do not desire you to understand, just 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 enterall of the data 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 datain your case. Also, there’s no 50-page hard copyone-size-fits-all questionnaire for you to get through 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 Long Beach 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 Long Beach lawyer-crowd. You’re looking for someone with style who stands out, not melds in. 1-800-DIVORCE is exclusive in Long Beach. There is only one 1-800-DIVORCE lawyer in Long Beach. Check here or complete the web form below to see if Long Beach 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 Long Beach:

Norwalk, Downey, Huntington Beach, Garden Grove, Inglewood, Anaheim, Fullerton, Costa Mesa, Santa Ana, Orange, Los Angeles, Irvine, El Monte, West Covina, Pasadena, Burbank, Pomona, Corona, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga, Thousand Oaks, Riverside, Santa Clarita, Simi Valley, Fontana, Rialto, Moreno Valley, Palmdale, San Bernardino, Murrieta