How to Find the Best Divorce Lawyer in Santa Clara California?  - Best Santa Clara Divorce Attorney Santa Clara County

It’s a trick question. You do not want to locate the most effective divorce attorney in Santa Clara, California There are a lot of divorce attorneys in Santa Clara that will do a just as excellent undertaking for you. It would be out of the question to decide which one is the “absolute best.”

The correct issue for you, the Santa Clara divorce consumer, is precisely how to discover just one of those Santa Clara top divorce attorneys at the exact standards of representation as well as price for the aspects of your certain circumstances – while steering clear of all of the usual, as well as occasionally unsafe, challenges of the Santa Clara divorce lawyer selection choice.

If you know what those challenges are (I will tell you in this post) as well as if you have the appropriate attitude, namely that you wish to make your Santa Clara divorce lawyer fit your case as well as not permit the attorney to require your case to fit his or her rigid practice profile, then you raise greatly your possibilities of nailing the Santa Clara divorce lawyer hiring choice. Getting you through that decision efficiently is the objective of this article.

Initially, let’s itemize the 4 traits to stay clear of:

1. Avoid Do-It-Yourself Divorce:

It is conceivable, repeat POSSIBLE, to acquire cost-free family law forms from California’s judicial council or family court sites. Those cost-free divorce forms will be blank, obviously. You can at that point try to finish as well as file the forms at your neighborhood Santa Clara County divorce court by yourself without expert aid. This is feasible – nevertheless highly unlikely, extremely difficult, complicated, discouraging as well as exceptionally time-consuming.

Do it yourself divorce would certainly be practically out of the question, as well as not smart even to attempt, in any type of  complex or contested family law process. It would certainly be highly unlikely to be successful if you have minor children of the marriage or have any type of property or financial obligations to be listed in case or have custody, visitation or assistance agreements in your proceedings. It would absolutely be ill-advised in a case involving domestic physical violence. Do it yourself would certainly additionally be hard if you have a job or if you place any sort of worth on your own time. Family law forms as well as procedures are created by attorneys to puzzle you to make sure that you work with – a lawyer.

Please excuse me if I do not invest way too much time on the DIY threat. 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 try to obtain a cost-free divorce are most likely to  try Do-It-Yourself divorce no matter what. For some reason, possibly financial, there is absolutely nothing I have actually been able to uncover to convince them not to.

DIY in Family Law is always fake affordability. You WILL probably screw it up, as well as screwed-up cases are a lot more problematic as well as really expensive to remedy as well as conclude. Don’t play this game. The system is created by attorneys to puzzle you as well as require you to employ a divorce lawyer. There are now cost-effective choices readily available– see below. Don’t go it alone in Divorce or Family Law.

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

An uncontested divorce is just one in which the litigants will not be contesting any type of problems, including the divorce itself. The litigants do not need to be happy as well as they do not need to like each other. They are either totally or mostly in agreement on all problems as well as are smart enough to understand that standard full-representation divorce attorneys (with huge retainers as well as billable hrs) would certainly be the only winners if they contested relatively insignificant problems in their divorce.

Conventional full representation by a regional Santa Clara divorce lawyer is when that lawyer will represent you in all aspects of your divorce case. It is highly likely to be a very good professional service, but it is very expensive.

If you have a disputed case, a complicated case, a high-value case or a case that involves domestic violence or the threat of domestic violence, full representation by a Santa Clara divorce lawyer is NOT to be evaded. It is a prerequisite.

A contested case signifies that you as well as your spouse/partner are contesting ANY issue in the case. A complicated case contains legal complexities such as tax problems, active business problems, a special needs child of the marriage or any one of numerous other complex legal issues. A high-value case indicates that your marital estate is large. There is no particular dollar limit. Absolutely, if you have a high 7-figure net marital estate or greater, that is a high-value case.

If you believe that you have a disputed,complicated or high-value case, you do. Employ an experienced as well as high priced Santa Clara divorce lawyer for full conventional representation. Seek 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 Santa Clara divorce lawyer. In fact, under those conditions, full legal representation by a Santa Clara divorce lawyer ends up being a threat to your financial position. Steer clear of it.

Naturally, if you call or email a traditional Santa Clara divorce lawyer, they will not tell you that you do not need their full representation service. In fact, they will try to terrify the crap out of you by informing you that you absolutely need to have their service and that your case will get screwed up without it.

That could well happen– even in a non-DIY case. I’ll share with you next how to stay clear of possibly 90+% of the prospective threat of getting your case screwed up if you do not go DIY and you DON’T employ a traditional Santa Clara divorce attorney on a complete representation basis.

Your case might likewise possibly get screwed up if you DID employ a complete representation Santa Clara divorce attorney. That’s likewise not probable, but it could possibly happen.

However, what will DEFINITELY happen if you employ a traditional full representation Santa Clara divorce attorney to manage your uncontested divorce or family law case is that you will get screwed economically. Your case may be dealt with effectively, but you will overbuy excessive services and you will overpay for them.

There’s no need for that to happen any longer. Your mothers and fathers had few other choices on their family law hiring choices. Your grandparents had no other choices. You have numerous legitimate choices to make your Santa Clara uncontested divorce lawyer hiring decision based upon the nature and facts of your case, not upon the BMW payments of Santa Clara divorce attorneys. Continue reading.

3. Avoid Unqualified Unregulated Online Divorce Mills:

This is by far the biggest danger you encounter in your hiring decision in regards to damage to your future legal and financial security. Non-lawyer online divorce is a big industry. And it is exceptionally unsafe to your legal and financial future.

Online divorce mills use slick websites, wicked-cool divorce software, costs lower than MOST attorneys, no legal advice, no legal knowledge, no professional licensing, no legal education, no code of principles, no malpractice insurance, no knowledge of Santa Clara County divorce policies, no local knowledge about Santa Clara County rules of court, local Santa Clara County forms, local practices or the policies of specific local judges in the Santa Clara area and no professional interest in you or your case. And all within a completely unregulated Wild-West industry rampant with all kinds of incompetence, price fraud, and up-selling.

Online divorce mill costs average about $300, but what you get for that $300 fee is remarkably little– just prepared California divorce forms. Any other services provided are all up-sold on the basis that as soon as they’ve got you hooked, what are you going to do – walk away from cash already spent? You are at their whim and you are totally unprotected. And they know it!

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

If you choose an online divorce mill, you’ll constantly be dealing with low-level, untrained, disinterested, high turn-over personnel, call center staff members and folks in India, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Mexico or some other state. No one will perform any type of analysis on your case to secure you and any minor children from future legal or financial damage. Customer assistance will be terrible because it doesn’t need to be anything else. You will never have the ability to meet anyone at an online divorce mill as it is most likely that none of them lie in Santa Clara and even in California

If you work with an online divorce mill thinking you will save yourself a few dollars and you and your family wind 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 directories like Avvo, FindLaw, LegalZoom, Justia, Google Screened, Google Business Profile (formerly GMB) and now even Yelp. This is the latest pitfall to stay clear of in your Santa Clara divorce lawyer hiring choice.

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

If you work with a Santa Clara divorce attorney you found on a mass-lawyer finder platform, you’re going to overpay to some extent, depending upon how much the lawyer is paying the lawyer finder platform, but not as severely as if you had actually employed a traditional full representation Santa Clara family law attorney directly.

Undoubtedly, you do not want to employ a traditional full representation Santa Clara divorce attorney you discover on a mass-lawyer platform. That would intensify your over-payment, but the important aspect here is that you do not want to employ a traditional full representation Santa Clara divorce attorney to manage your basic uncontested divorce, no matter where you discover that lawyer!!

The threat with hiring a Santa Clara divorce attorney that you stumble on ONLY on a mass-lawyer platform is that you’re working with a second-rate Santa Clara divorce attorney– a drone who just stands in line with all other Santa Clara divorce attorneys and HOPES that s/he will get your business but does nothing to differentiate himself or herself from the Santa Clara lawyer-crowd. That lawyer does nothing to persuade you that s/he is the best resolution to your case. You do not want to have that lawyer.

You want to have a Santa Clara divorce lawyer who is creative, strong, one-of-a-kind, classy and business-savvy. In fact, why would you work with a Santa Clara divorce lawyer to care for 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 searching for a divorce lawyer who purposefully sets himself or herself apart from the Santa Clara lawyer-crowd and does NOT blend in by joining Avvo and doing nothing else.

Mass-lawyer finder platforms like Avvo are free of charge to sign up with, which is why every divorce lawyer in Santa Clara County will have registered. So you need to not disqualify a Santa Clara divorce lawyer just because s/he has an Avvo account.

However, you need to not think that such a Santa Clara divorce lawyer is extremely intelligent or business-savvy either. The problem is that while these mass-lawyer platforms are free of charge for the lawyer to join, the lawyer needs to then begin to pay continually increasing costs on a bid-basis, constantly contending versus other local Santa Clara County divorce attorneys, 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 costs, she’ll not get sufficient cases to stay in business.

It’s a winner-take-all system with the leading extremely few attorneys in each town taking almost all the business– based on how much marketing costs they can pay– not based on how excellent they are or on how they have actually configured their offerings to fit 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 distinctiveness of his or her service offerings.

If that me-too divorce lawyer in Santa Clara 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 sales, but his or her costs of acquiring cases will continuously rise while his or her costs are relatively fixed by the flat need for consumer law services such as divorce.

The Santa Clara divorce lawyer who plays the Avvo pay-to-play game will constantly need a growing number of lower profit cases just to stay on top of sales costs. You do not desire that business-foolishness in somebody you will rely on with your legal and financial future.

And yes, that lawyer is going to use the exact same brain to take care of your case as s/he used to screw his or her own business into the ground.

How to Find the Best Santa Clara Divorce Lawyer – Best Santa Clara Divorce Attorney Santa Clara County

So above are 4 things to stay clear of: DIY divorce, conventional full-service lawyer representation in basic uncontested cases, unlicensed and unregulated online divorce mills and lackluster me-too drone attorneys who are actually bad at business.

So what do you actually look for in a Santa Clara divorce attorney?

Before I tell you, I want to set the stage by giving you 2 remarkable stats that I did not believe when I first saw them. These are game-changers in the legal profession and you need to maximize them in your Santa Clara 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 Santa Clara 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 Santa Clara divorce attorney:

1. Licensed local Santa Clara divorce attorney (not an unlicensed out-of-state online divorce mill);
2. Offers unbundled services in uncontested cases– this suggests that you just buy the legal services your case 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 evaluate your docs before they are filed, recognize problem issues in your case and recommend the best choices based upon legal advice and local knowledge. If you call a lawyer and inquire about unbundled services and you can tell they do not understand or do not desire you to understand, just hang up. They do not yet get it. Move on. Don’t inform 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 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 complete 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 Santa Clara 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 Santa Clara lawyer-crowd. You’re looking for someone with style who stands out, not melds in. 1-800-DIVORCE is exclusive in Santa Clara. There is only one 1-800-DIVORCE lawyer in Santa Clara. Check here or complete the web form below to see if Santa Clara 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 Santa Clara:

Hayward, San Mateo, Oakland, Daly City, San Francisco, Berkeley, Concord, Richmond, Antioch, Salinas, Vallejo, Stockton, Modesto, Fairfield, Elk Grove, Santa Rosa, Sacramento, Roseville, Fresno, Clovis, Visalia, Santa Maria, Reno, Bakersfield, Ventura, Oxnard, Simi Valley, Santa Clarita, Thousand Oaks, Lancaster