How to Find the Best Divorce Lawyer in San Bernardino California?  - Find the Best Divorce Attorney San Bernardino

It’s a trick question. You do not want to locate the absolute best divorce lawyer in San Bernardino, California There are several divorce attorneys in San Bernardino that would do a just as very good job for you. It would undoubtedly be impossible to ascertain which one is the “best.”

The real issue for you, the San Bernardino divorce client, is exactly how to identify just one of those San Bernardino top divorce attorneys at the precise levels of assistance as well as cost for the facts of your certain situation – while steering clear of all of the common, as well as sometimes harmful, pitfalls of the San Bernardino divorce attorney hiring decision.

If you know what those pitfalls are (I will tell you in this post) as well as if you have the correct mindset, namely that you want to make your San Bernardino divorce attorney fit your instance as well as not allow the lawyer to compel your instance to fit his or her stiff practice profile, after that you raise substantially your chances of nailing the San Bernardino divorce attorney employing decision. Getting you through that choice successfully is the objective of this post.

To start with, let’s mention the 4 aspects to stay clear of:

1. Avoid Do-It-Yourself Divorce:

It is possible, repeat POSSIBLE, to acquire free family law forms from California’s judicial council or family court websites. Those free divorce forms are going to be uncompleted, obviously. You can at that point attempt to finish as well as record the forms at your regional San Bernardino County divorce court by yourself without professional assistance. This is feasible – nevertheless highly unlikely, very difficult, complicated, discouraging as well as very slow.

Do it yourself divorce would be practically unattainable, as well as not smart even to attempt, in any type of  complicated or contended family law case. It would be highly unlikely to be successful if you have minor children of the marital relationship or have any type of property or debts to be itemized in case or have custody, visitation or assistance agreements in your case. It would definitely be foolish in a matter involving domestic violence. Do it yourself would likewise be tough if you have a job or if you position any sort of worth on your own time. Family law documents as well as procedures are created by attorneys to perplex you to ensure that you employ – an attorney.

Please excuse me if I do not invest 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 people that begin the divorce procedure with the intent to attempt to get a totally free divorce are going to  attempt DIY divorce no matter what. For one reason or another, most likely economic, there is absolutely nothing I have actually been able to uncover to convince them not to.

DIY in Family Law is consistently false economy. You WILL probably screw it up, as well as screwed-up cases are far more challenging as well as expensive to deal with as well as finalize. Do not play this game. The system is created by attorneys to perplex you as well as compel you to employ a divorce attorney. There are currently cost-effective alternatives readily available– see below. Do not go it alone in Divorce or Family Law.

2. Avoid Traditional San Bernardino 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 type of problems, including the divorce itself. The parties do not need to be happy as well as they do not need to like each other. They are either totally or generally in agreement on all problems as well as are smart enough to understand that conventional full-representation divorce attorneys (with huge retainers as well as billable hours) would be the only winners if they contended relatively trivial problems in their divorce.

Traditional full representation by a neighborhood San Bernardino divorce attorney is when that attorney will represent you in all aspects of your divorce litigation. It is highly likely to be an excellent professional service, however it is expensive.

If you have a disputed matter, a complicated matter, a high-value matter or a matter that entails domestic violence or the threat of domestic violence, full representation by a San Bernardino divorce attorney is NOT to be refrained from. It is a requirement.

A contested matter denotes that you as well as your spouse/partner are contesting ANY issue in the matter. A complex matter consists of legal complexities such as tax problems, active business problems, 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 very large. 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 suspect that you have a disputed,complex or high-value matter, you do. Employ an experienced as well as expensive San Bernardino divorce attorney for full 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 full representation by a San Bernardino divorce attorney. In fact, under those circumstances, full legal representation by a San Bernardino divorce attorney ends up being a danger to your economic position. Steer clear of it.

Naturally, if you call or email a conventional San Bernardino divorce attorney, they will not tell you that you do not need their full representation service. In fact, they will attempt to scare the crap out of you by telling you that you without a doubt are in need of their service and that your case will get messed up without it.

That might occur– even in a non-DIY case. I’ll share with you next how to prevent perhaps 90+% of the potential danger of getting your case messed up if you do not go DIY and you DON’T employ a conventional San Bernardino divorce lawyer on a full representation basis.

Your case could also perhaps get messed up if you DID employ a full representation San Bernardino divorce lawyer. That’s also not probable, but it could possibly take place.

However, what will DEFINITELY take place if you employ a conventional full representation San Bernardino divorce lawyer to handle your uncontested divorce or family law case is that you will get screwed financially. Your case may be dealt with very well, but you will overbuy unnecessary services and you will pay too much for them.

There’s no need for that to take place anymore. Your mothers and fathers had few other alternatives on their family law employing choices. Your grandparents had no other alternatives. You have lots of valid alternatives to make your San Bernardino uncontested divorce attorney employing choice based upon the nature and facts of your case, not upon the BMW payments of San Bernardino divorce attorneys. Keep reading.

3. Avoid Unqualified Unregulated Online Divorce Mills:

This is without a doubt the biggest risk you deal with in your employing choice in terms of damage to your future legal and economic safety. Non-lawyer online divorce is a big market. And it is very harmful to your legal and economic future.

Online divorce mills provide slick websites, wicked-cool divorce software, fees lower than MOST attorneys, no legal suggestions, no legal understanding, no professional licensing, no legal education, no code of principles, no malpractice insurance, no understanding of San Bernardino County divorce procedures, no regional understanding about San Bernardino County rules of court, regional San Bernardino County documents, regional practices or the policies of individual regional judges in the San Bernardino local area and no professional interest in you or your case. And all within an entirely unregulated Wild-West market widespread with all kinds of incompetence, price scams, and up-selling.

Online divorce mill fees average about $300, but what you get for that $300 cost is extremely little– simply prepared California divorce forms. Any other services offered are all up-sold on the basis that as soon as they’ve got you hooked, what are you going to do – ignore money already invested? You are at their whim and you are totally vulnerable. And they know it!

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

If you choose an online divorce mill, you’ll constantly be contending with low-level, inexperienced, indifferent, high turn-over personnel, call center workers and folks in India, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Mexico or some other state. No one will conduct any kind of analysis on your case to secure you and any minor children from future legal or financial damage. Client assistance will be dreadful due to the fact that it doesn’t need to be anything else. You will never be able to meet with anyone at an online divorce mill as it is highly likely that none of them lie in San Bernardino or perhaps in California

If you employ 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 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 pitfall to stay clear of in your San Bernardino divorce lawyer employing 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 employ a San Bernardino divorce lawyer 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 severely as if you had actually employed a conventional full representation San Bernardino family law lawyer directly.

Obviously, you do not wish to employ a conventional full representation San Bernardino divorce lawyer you discover on a mass-lawyer platform. That would intensify your over-payment, but the essential element here is that you do not wish to employ a conventional full representation San Bernardino divorce lawyer to handle your easy uncontested divorce, no matter where you discover that lawyer!!

The danger with employing a San Bernardino divorce lawyer that you discover ONLY on a mass-lawyer platform is that you’re working with a below average San Bernardino divorce lawyer– a drone who simply stands in line with all other San Bernardino divorce attorneys and HOPES that s/he will get your trade but does nothing to distinguish himself or herself from the San Bernardino lawyer-crowd. That lawyer does nothing to convince you that s/he is the exceptional resolution to your case. You do not want that lawyer.

You wish to have a San Bernardino divorce lawyer who is innovative, bold, one-of-a-kind, stylish and business-savvy. In fact, why would you employ a San Bernardino divorce lawyer to safeguard your own legal and economic interests when s/he does not even care for his or her own law practice interests aggressively and decisively? You’re trying to find a divorce lawyer who intentionally sets himself or herself apart from the San Bernardino lawyer-crowd and does NOT blend in by signing up with Avvo and doing nothing else.

Mass-lawyer finder platforms like Avvo are totally free to join, which is why every divorce lawyer in San Bernardino County will have registered. So you need to not disqualify a San Bernardino divorce lawyer only because s/he has an Avvo account.

However, you need to not believe that such a San Bernardino divorce lawyer is very intelligent or business-savvy either. The problem is that while these mass-lawyer platforms are totally free for the lawyer to register with, the lawyer will need to then begin to pay continuously increasing fees on a bid-basis, constantly battling versus other regional San Bernardino County divorce attorneys, to be seen on the top 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 fees, she’ll not get enough business to keep up.

It’s a winner-take-all system with the top very few attorneys in each town taking almost all the business– based upon how much marketing fees they can pay– not based upon how good they are or on how they have configured their offerings to fit 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 Bernardino pays more to the mass-lawyer finder company and keeps paying more, s/he’ll get a highlighted position on the platform’s site and will get more business, but his or her costs of getting cases will constantly rise while his or her fees are relatively fixed by the flat need for consumer law services such as divorce.

The San Bernardino divorce lawyer who plays the Avvo pay-to-play scheme will constantly need more and more lower profit cases simply to stay on top of sales 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 utilized to screw his or her own law practice into the ground.

How to Find the Best San Bernardino Divorce Lawyer – Find the Best Divorce Attorney San Bernardino

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

So what do you in fact seek in a San Bernardino divorce lawyer?

Before I tell you, I wish to set the stage by providing you 2 amazing statistics that I did not presume true when I first saw them. These are game-changers in the legal profession and you really need to take full advantage of them in your San Bernardino divorce lawyer selection 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 San Bernardino 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 Bernardino divorce attorney:

1. Licensed local San Bernardino divorce attorney (not an unlicensed out-of-state online divorce mill);
2. Offers unbundled services in uncontested cases– this suggests that you only buy the legal services your case actually requires. You will usually 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 filed, recognize problem issues in your case and suggest the best alternatives based upon legal suggestions and regional understanding. If you call a lawyer and inquire about unbundled services and you can determine they do not know or do not want you to know, simply hang up. They do not yet get it. Move on. Do not educate them.
3. Uses online divorce software that allows you to log into a client portal and enterall of the information in your case.  This not only conserves time and money, but it in fact empowers you in your own case. You are the source of all informationin your case. Also, 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 San Bernardino 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 San Bernardino lawyer-crowd. You’re looking for someone with style who stands out, not melds in. 1-800-DIVORCE is exclusive in San Bernardino. There is only one 1-800-DIVORCE lawyer in San Bernardino. Check here or complete the web form below to see if San Bernardino 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 San Bernardino:

Moreno Valley, Riverside, Rancho Cucamonga, Ontario, Corona, Pomona, Victorville, West Covina, Murrieta, Orange, Fullerton, Anaheim, Santa Ana, El Monte, Irvine, Temecula, Garden Grove, Norwalk, Costa Mesa, Pasadena, Downey, Huntington Beach, Los Angeles, Long Beach, Palmdale, Burbank, Inglewood, Torrance, Lancaster, Oceanside