It’s a trick question. You do not need to find the best divorce lawyer in San Antonio, Texas There are several divorce lawyers in San Antonio who would do a just as fine job for you. It would undoubtedly be impracticable to decide on which one is the “best.”
The correct question for you, the San Antonio divorce client, is exactly how to identify just one of those San Antonio best divorce attorneys at the proper levels of assistance and price for the facts of your unique case – while staying clear of all of the typical, and occasionally hazardous, mistakes of the San Antonio divorce attorney selection decision.
If you know what those mistakes are (I will advise you in this article) and if you have the proper perspective, namely that you intend to make your San Antonio divorce attorney fit your case and not allow the attorney to force your case to fit his or her stiff practice profile, then you boost significantly your opportunities of nailing the San Antonio divorce attorney hiring decision. Getting you through that choice effectively is the goal of this blog post.
To begin with, let’s list the 4 things to stay clear of:
It is conceivable, repeat POSSIBLE, to acquire totally free family law documents from Texas’s judicial council or family court websites. Those totally free divorce documents are going to be uncompleted, of course. You can then try to finish and submit the documents at your local Bexar County divorce court on your own without specialist aid. This is feasible – however extremely unlikely, really difficult, confusing, aggravating and exceptionally time-consuming.
Do it yourself divorce would be practically impossible, and not sensible even to try, in any complex or disputed family law action. It would be extremely unlikely to be effective if you have minor children of the marriage or have any assets or financial debts to be itemized in case or have custody, visitation or support arrangements in your case. It would absolutely be foolish in a case entailing domestic violence. Do it yourself would likewise be tough if you work or if you put any kind of worth on your own time. Family law documents and procedures are created by attorneys to perplex you to make sure that you hire – a lawyer.
Please excuse me if I do not invest too much time on the do it yourself risk. My experience on the cutting edge of California divorce for the past 40+ years is that individuals who start the divorce procedure with the intent to try to get a free divorce are most likely to try Do-It-Yourself divorce no matter what. For some reason, possibly economic, there is absolutely nothing I‘ve been able to discover to persuade them not to.
Do It Yourself in Family Law is always fake saving. You WILL probably screw it up, and screwed-up matters are far more difficult and very expensive to correct and conclude. Don’t play this game. The system is created by attorneys to perplex you and force you to hire a divorce attorney. There are currently affordable options offered– see below. Don’t go it alone in Divorce or Family Law.
An uncontested divorce is just one in which the parties will not be disputing any issues, including the divorce itself. The parties do not have to be happy and they do not have to like each other. They are either completely or generally in agreement on all issues and are sensible enough to realize that traditional full-representation divorce attorneys (with substantial retainers and billable hours) would be the only winners if they disputed fairly unimportant issues in their divorce.
Traditional full representation by a local San Antonio divorce attorney is when that attorney will represent you in all facets of your divorce matter. It is extremely likely to be an excellent professional service, but it is very costly.
If you have a contested matter, a complicated matter, a high-value matter or a case that includes domestic violence or the threat of domestic violence, full representation by a San Antonio divorce attorney is NOT to be refrained from. It is a necessity.
A disputed matter indicates that you and your spouse/partner are contesting ANY issue in the matter. A complex matter includes legal complexities such as tax issues, active business issues, a special needs child of the marriage or any one of numerous other intricate legal scenarios. A high-value case denotes that your marital estate is huge. There is no specific dollar limit. Absolutely, if you have a high 7-figure net marital estate or greater, that is a high-value matter.
If you think that you have a contested,complex or high-value matter, you do. Hire an expert and high priced San Antonio divorce attorney for full traditional representation. Seek 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 full representation by a San Antonio divorce attorney. In fact, under those circumstances, full legal representation by a San Antonio divorce attorney ends up being a danger to your economic position. Avoid it.
Naturally, if you call or email a conventional San Antonio divorce attorney, they will not tell you that you do not need their full representation service. In fact, they will try to scare the crap out of you by sharing with you that you without a doubt need to have their service which your case will get messed up without it.
That could possibly come to pass– 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 messed up if you do not go DIY and you DON’T hire a conventional San Antonio divorce attorney on a complete representation basis.
Your case might likewise potentially get messed up if you DID hire a complete representation San Antonio divorce attorney. That’s likewise not likely, but it could happen.
However, what will DEFINITELY happen if you hire a conventional full representation San Antonio divorce attorney to handle your uncontested divorce or family law case is that you will get screwed financially. Your case might be managed very well, but you will overbuy excessive services and you will overpay for them.
There’s no requirement for that to happen anymore. Your mothers and fathers had few other options on their family law hiring decisions. Your grandparents had no other options. You have numerous legitimate options to make your San Antonio uncontested divorce attorney hiring choice based upon the nature and truths of your case, not upon the BMW payments of San Antonio divorce attorneys. Continue reading.
This is without a doubt the greatest danger you deal with in your hiring choice in terms of damage to your future legal and economic security. Non-lawyer online divorce is a big industry. And it is exceptionally hazardous to your legal and economic future.
Online divorce mills use slick websites, wicked-cool divorce software application, fees lower than MOST attorneys, no legal guidance, no legal understanding, no professional licensing, no legal education, no code of principles, no malpractice insurance, no understanding of Bexar County divorce procedures, no local understanding about Bexar County guidelines of court, local Bexar County documents, local practices or the policies of specific local judges in the San Antonio area and no professional interest in you or your case. And all within an entirely uncontrolled Wild-West industry widespread with all type of incompetence, price fraud, and up-selling.
Online divorce mill fees average about $300, but what you get for that $300 charge is extremely little– simply prepared Texas divorce documents. Any other services offered 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 whim and you are completely unguarded. And they know it!
See the Online Divorce Association of America’s site for a good review of just some of the more common scams and up-sells to be experienced in the online divorce industry.
If you hire an online divorce mill, you’ll always be dealing with low-level, inexperienced, disinterested, high turn-over personnel, call center employees 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 monetary damage. Client support will be terrible due to the fact that it does not have to be anything else. You will never ever be able to meet anyone at an online divorce mill as it is highly likely that none are located in San Antonio or perhaps in Texas
If you hire an online divorce mill believing you will save yourself a few dollars and you and your household end up paying for their errors for many years, that is NOT a cheap divorce!
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 risk to stay clear of in your San Antonio divorce lawyer hiring decision.
However, the potential harm here is not huge– nowhere near the damage done regularly by non-lawyer online divorce mills or indeed the damage most likely to be done by you to your own case with DIY divorce.
If you hire a San Antonio 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, but not as badly as if you had actually hired a conventional full representation San Antonio family law attorney straight up.
Undoubtedly, you do not want to hire a conventional full representation San Antonio divorce attorney you discover on a mass-lawyer platform. That would compound your over-payment, but the essential aspect here is that you do not want to hire a conventional full representation San Antonio divorce attorney to handle your simple uncontested divorce, no matter where you discover that lawyer!!
The risk with hiring a San Antonio divorce attorney that you find ONLY on a mass-lawyer platform is that you’re hiring a mediocre San Antonio divorce attorney– a drone who simply stands in line with all other San Antonio divorce attorneys and HOPES that s/he will get your trade but does nothing to differentiate himself or herself from the San Antonio lawyer-crowd. That lawyer does nothing to persuade you that s/he is the standout resolution to your case. You do not want to have that lawyer.
You want a San Antonio divorce lawyer who is creative, strong, one-of-a-kind, classy and business-savvy. In fact, why would you hire a San Antonio divorce lawyer to care for your own legal and economic interests when s/he does not even care for 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 San Antonio lawyer-crowd and does NOT blend in by joining Avvo and doing nothing else.
Mass-lawyer finder platforms like Avvo are free to join, which is why every divorce lawyer in Bexar County will have signed up. So you should not disqualify a San Antonio divorce lawyer just because s/he has an Avvo account.
However, you should not think that such a San Antonio divorce lawyer is really clever or business-savvy either. The issue is that while these mass-lawyer platforms are free for the lawyer to sign up, the lawyer will need to then start to pay continuously increasing fees on a bid-basis, always competing against other local Bexar County divorce attorneys, to be seen on the top 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 top really few attorneys in each town taking almost all the business– based upon how much marketing fees they can pay– not based upon how excellent 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 distinctiveness of his or her service offerings.
If that me-too divorce lawyer in San Antonio pays more to the mass-lawyer finder platform and keeps paying more, s/he’ll get a highlighted position on the platform’s site and will get more sales, but his or her costs of acquiring cases will constantly increase while his or her fees are fairly set by the flat demand for consumer law services such as divorce.
The San Antonio divorce lawyer who plays the Avvo pay-to-play game will always need a growing number of lower revenue cases simply to keep up with business costs. You do not want that business-foolishness in somebody you will rely on with your legal and economic future.
And yes, that lawyer is going to utilize the same brain to care for your case as s/he used to screw his or her own business into the ground.
So above are 4 factors to stay away from: do it yourself divorce, old-fashioned full-service lawyer representation in simple uncontested cases, unlicensed and uncontrolled online divorce mills and uninspiring me-too drone attorneys who are truly bad at law practice business.
So what do you actually seek in a San Antonio divorce attorney?
Before I advise you, I want to set the stage by giving you two remarkable statistics that I did not believe when I initially saw them. These are game-changers in the legal profession and you need to maximize them in your San Antonio divorce lawyer selection decision:
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 San Antonio 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 San Antonio divorce attorney:
Austin, Round Rock, Killeen, Corpus Christi, Laredo, College Station, Waco, Houston, Pearland, Abilene, McAllen, Fort Worth, Arlington, Grand Prairie, Brownsville, Dallas, Irving, Mesquite, Carrollton, Garland, Richardson, Lewisville, Beaumont, Plano, Denton, Frisco, Tyler, Midland, McKinney, Odessa
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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.