How to Find the Best Divorce Lawyer in Saint Petersburg Florida?  - Best Saint Petersburg Divorce Attorney Pinellas County

It’s a trick question. You don’t want to locate the very best divorce lawyer or attorney in Saint Petersburg, Florida There are numerous divorce lawyers in Saint Petersburg who will do an equally good effort for you. It would undoubtedly be out of the question to establish which one is the “absolute best.”

The correct question for you, the Saint Petersburg divorce client, is just how to choose one of those Saint Petersburg top divorce lawyers at the exact standards of representation as well as expense for the facts of your individual circumstances – while staying away from every one of the typical, as well as occasionally unsafe, pitfalls of the Saint Petersburg divorce attorney hiring decision.

If you recognize what those pitfalls are (I will certainly advise you in this post) as well as if you have the correct attitude, particularly that you want to make your Saint Petersburg divorce attorney fit your situation as well as not enable the attorney to compel your situation to fit his or her rigid practice profile, then you increase considerably your chances of nailing the Saint Petersburg divorce attorney hiring decision. Getting you through that choice successfully is the objective of this post.

First, let’s list the 4 points to keep away from:

1. Avoid Do-It-Yourself Divorce:

It is conceivable, repeat POSSIBLE, to acquire free family law documents from Florida’s judicial council or family court internet sites. Those free divorce documents will be blank, obviously. You can at that point try to complete as well as record the documents at your regional Pinellas County divorce court on your own without professional aid. This is feasible – but extremely unlikely, really difficult, confusing, discouraging as well as very time-consuming.

Do it yourself divorce would certainly be practically out of the question, as well as not sensible even to attempt, in any type of  complex or contested family law process. It would certainly be extremely unlikely to be successful if you have minor children of the marriage or have any type of assets or financial debts to be detailed in case or have custody, visitation or assistance settlements in your matter. It would absolutely be ill-advised in a case entailing domestic violence. Do it yourself would certainly also be difficult if you work or if you position any type of value on your own time. Family law documents as well as procedures are designed by lawyers to confuse you so that you employ – a lawyer.

Please excuse me if I don’t spend way too much time on the do it yourself danger. My experience on the front lines of California divorce for the past 40+ years is that individuals who begin the divorce process with the intent to try to get a totally free divorce are going to  try DIY divorce no matter what. Somehow, possibly economic, there is nothing I‘ve been able to find to encourage them not to.

Do It Yourself in Family Law is consistently fake saving. You WILL probably screw it up, as well as screwed-up proceedings are much more perplexing as well as really expensive to fix as well as complete. Do not play this game. The system is designed by lawyers to confuse you as well as compel you to hire a divorce attorney. There are now affordable options offered– see listed below. Do not go it alone in Divorce or Family Law.

 

2. Avoid Traditional Saint Petersburg 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 type of concerns, including the divorce itself. The litigants don’t have to be cheerful as well as they don’t have to like each other. They are either totally or generally in agreement on all concerns as well as are sensible enough to recognize that conventional full-representation divorce lawyers (with huge retainers as well as billable hrs) would certainly be the only victors if they contested fairly insignificant concerns in their divorce.

Best Saint Petersburg Divorce Attorney Pinellas CountyConventional complete representation by a local Saint Petersburg divorce attorney is when that attorney will represent you in all parts of your divorce case. It is extremely likely to be an excellent service, yet it is very expensive.

If you have a disputed matter, a complicated matter, a high-value matter or a case that involves domestic violence or the threat of domestic violence, complete representation by a Saint Petersburg divorce attorney is NOT to be avoided. It is a necessity.

A contested matter indicates that you as well as your spouse/partner are disputing ANY issue in the matter. A complex matter contains legal complexities such as tax concerns, current business concerns, a special needs child of the marriage or any one of many additional intricate legal issues. A high-value case denotes that your marital estate is large. There is no specific dollar limit. Absolutely, if you have a high 7-figure net marital estate or higher, that is a high-value matter.

If you believe that you have a disputed,complex or high-value matter, you do. Work with an experienced as well as expensive Saint Petersburg divorce attorney for complete traditional representation. Try to find 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 complete representation by a Saint Petersburg divorce attorney. In fact, under those conditions, complete legal representation by a Saint Petersburg divorce attorney becomes a threat to your economic position. Avoid it.

Naturally, if you call or email a traditional Saint Petersburg divorce attorney, they will not tell you that you do not need their complete representation service. In fact, they will try to terrify the crap out of you by advising you that you absolutely need to have their service which your case will get screwed up without it.

That could possibly transpire– even in a non-DIY case. I’ll advise you next how to steer clear of possibly 90+% of the potential danger of getting your case screwed up if you don’t go DIY and you DON’T hire a traditional Saint Petersburg divorce attorney on a full representation basis.

Your case could likewise possibly get screwed up if you DID hire a full representation Saint Petersburg divorce attorney. That’s likewise not probable, but it could possibly occur.

However, what will DEFINITELY occur if you hire a traditional complete representation Saint Petersburg divorce attorney to handle your uncontested divorce or family law case is that you will get screwed financially. Your case might be dealt with very well, but you will overbuy needless services and you will pay too much for them.

There’s no requirement for that to occur any longer. Your parents had few other options on their family law hiring options. Your grandparents had no other options. You have lots of legitimate options to make your Saint Petersburg uncontested divorce attorney hiring choice based upon the nature and truths of your case, not upon the BMW payments of Saint Petersburg divorce lawyers. Continue reading.

3. Avoid Unqualified Unregulated Online Divorce Mills:

This is by far the greatest threat 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 industry. And it is very unsafe to your legal and economic future.

Online divorce mills use slick websites, wicked-cool divorce computer software, charges lower than MOST lawyers, no legal recommendations, no legal understanding, no professional licensing, no legal education, no code of ethics, no malpractice insurance coverage, no understanding of Pinellas County divorce policies, no regional understanding about Pinellas County guidelines of court, regional Pinellas County documents, regional practices or the policies of individual regional judges in the Saint Petersburg local area and no professional interest in you or your case. And all within a totally uncontrolled Wild-West industry widespread with all sort of incompetence, price fraud, and up-selling.

Online divorce mill charges average about $300, but what you get for that $300 fee is extremely little– just prepared Florida divorce documents. Any other services supplied are all up-sold on the basis that once they’ve got you hooked, what are you going to do – ignore cash already spent? You are at their whim and you are totally unguarded. And they know it!

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

If you employ an online divorce mill, you’ll always be dealing with low-level, untrained, indifferent, 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 secure you and any minor children from future legal or financial damage. Client assistance will be awful since it doesn’t have to be anything else. You will never ever have the ability to meet anyone at an online divorce mill as it is very likely that none lie in Saint Petersburg or even in Florida

If you employ an online divorce mill thinking you will save yourself a few dollars and you and your household end up paying for their mistakes for 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 latest mistake to keep away from in your Saint Petersburg divorce lawyer hiring decision.

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

If you employ a Saint Petersburg divorce attorney you found on a mass-lawyer finder platform, you’re going to pay too much to some extent, depending on how much the lawyer is paying the lawyer finder platform, but not as badly as if you had actually employed a traditional complete representation Saint Petersburg family law attorney directly.

Undoubtedly, you don’t wish to hire a traditional complete representation Saint Petersburg divorce attorney you find on a mass-lawyer platform. That would compound your over-payment, but the essential aspect here is that you don’t wish to hire a traditional complete representation Saint Petersburg divorce attorney to handle your simple uncontested divorce, no matter where you find that lawyer!!

Best Saint Petersburg Divorce Attorney Pinellas CountyThe danger with hiring a Saint Petersburg divorce attorney that you discover ONLY on a mass-lawyer platform is that you’re working with a humdrum Saint Petersburg divorce attorney– a drone who just stands in line with all other Saint Petersburg divorce lawyers and HOPES that s/he will get your trade but does nothing to differentiate himself or herself from the Saint Petersburg lawyer-crowd. That lawyer does nothing to persuade you that s/he is the best resolution to your case. You don’t want that lawyer.

You want to get a Saint Petersburg divorce lawyer who is imaginative, vibrant, unique, classy and business-savvy. In fact, why would you employ a Saint Petersburg 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 aggressively and decisively? You’re trying to find a divorce lawyer who purposefully sets himself or herself apart from the Saint Petersburg lawyer-crowd and does NOT blend in by joining Avvo and doing nothing else.

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

However, you should not consider that such a Saint Petersburg divorce lawyer is really smart or business-savvy either. The issue is that while these mass-lawyer platforms are free of cost for the lawyer to sign up, the lawyer needs to then begin to pay constantly increasing charges on a bid-basis, always competing against other regional Pinellas County divorce lawyers, to be seen on the leading 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 charges, she’ll not get enough business to keep up.

It’s a winner-take-all system with the leading really few lawyers in each town taking almost all cases– based upon how much advertising charges they can pay– not based upon 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 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 Saint Petersburg 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, but his or her expenses of getting business will constantly rise while his or her charges are fairly set by the flat need for consumer law services such as divorce.

The Saint Petersburg divorce lawyer who plays the Avvo pay-to-play game will always need increasingly more lower revenue cases just to keep up with business expenses. You don’t want that business-foolishness in someone you will rely on with your legal and economic future.

And yes, that lawyer is going to use 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 Saint Petersburg Divorce Lawyer – Best Saint Petersburg Divorce Attorney Pinellas County

So above are 4 factors to refrain from using: do it yourself divorce, conventional full-service lawyer representation in simple uncontested cases, unlicensed and uncontrolled online divorce mills and lackluster me-too drone lawyers who are truly bad at law practice business.

So what do you actually try to find in a Saint Petersburg divorce attorney?

Best Saint Petersburg Divorce Attorney Pinellas CountyBefore I advise you, I wish to set the stage by providing you 2 impressive data that I did not presume true when I initially saw them. These are game-changers in the legal profession and you really need to take full advantage of them in your Saint Petersburg divorce lawyer employing 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 Saint Petersburg 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 Saint Petersburg divorce attorney:

  1. Licensed local Saint Petersburg divorce attorney (not an unlicensed out-of-state online divorce mill);
  2. Offers unbundled services in uncontested cases– this means that you only buy the legal services your case needs. You will typically 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, recognize problem issues in your case and suggest the very best options based upon legal recommendations and regional understanding. If you call a lawyer and ask about unbundled services and you can tell they don’t understand or don’t want you to understand, just hang up. They don’t 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 conserves 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 get through 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 Saint Petersburg 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 Saint Petersburg lawyer-crowd. You’re looking for someone with style who stands out, not melds in. 1-800-DIVORCE is exclusive in Saint Petersburg. There is only one 1-800-DIVORCE lawyer in Saint Petersburg. Check here or complete the web form below to see if Saint Petersburg 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 Saint Petersburg:

Clearwater, Tampa, Lakeland, Cape Coral, Orlando, Palm Bay, Gainesville, Port Saint Lucie, West Palm Beach, Coral Springs, Jacksonville, Pompano Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Pembroke Pines, Miramar, Hollywood, Hialeah, Miami, Tallahassee, Savannah, Columbus, Macon, Mobile, Charleston, Montgomery, North Charleston, Augusta, Atlanta, Athens, Sandy Springs

 

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If you’ve made the difficult personal decision to terminate your marriage or to seek other critical family law relief, you should proceed at your pace and at your comfort level.

So continue to think and please keep us in mind. We know you’ll remember 1-800-DIVORCE.

Remember also that you want a bold competitive divorce lawyer who stands out from the me-too lawyer-crowd. You don’t want a lawyer to look after your legal and economic future if s/he doesn’t even compete and look after his or her own future.

…including emergency orders, disclosure laws, negotiation of settlements and trial work but also in mediation or collaborative law – should your case be suitable for those methods either now or later on.

Non-lawyer online divorce providers only provide the most basic divorce papers. For you to obtain any additional services through a non-lawyer, they would have to make a cold referral to a lawyer in your area.

Why not start off with the best divorce lawyer near me, such as your local 1-800-DIVORCE lawyer, who will already know the facts and issues of your case if additional services become necessary?

Use 1-800-DIVORCE to find the best divorce lawyer near me.

Your local 1-800-DIVORCE lawyer is required to maintain a professional and confidential relationship with you.  S/he is required to handle your case with the highest ethical standards.  S/he is required to take continuing legal education and professional responsibility courses.

Non-lawyer online divorce providers are NOT staffed by lawyers.  They are not licensed or bonded.  They get on-the-job training only! You will have no effective recourse should you be treated dishonestly or incompetently by an online provider.

Search for “online divorce problems” and you will have plenty to read.  Many online providers are truly terrible.  A few are downright fraudulent. If you get caught with a bad one, you will need a lawyer, and much more money, just to get your case sorted.

Don’t take that risk when a local solution exists at a similar cost.  Use 1-800-DIVORCE to find the best divorce lawyer near me.

A non-lawyer online divorce provider will likely be located far away and will be clueless about your state’s laws and your local Rules of Court. Online divorce providers claim to know how to handle divorces in all 3000+ counties in the US – an impossibility.

You can make an appointment to see your local 1-800-DIVORCE lawyer if the need arises. 

If you hire a non-lawyer online divorce provider, it will be the blind leading the blind. And when things go wrong, which they will, you will never get face time with that online provider and you will rarely be able to reach them on the phone or by email. Find a local divorce lawyer. Find the best divorce lawyer near me.

If you hire an unregulated online divorce outfit for $300-$1000 and end up paying for their mistakes forever, that’s NOT a cheap divorce.

Divorce is tough enough already! Don’t go it alone. Find the best  divorce lawyer near me through 1-800-DIVORCE.

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