How to Find the Best Divorce Lawyer in Santa Maria California?  - Santa Maria Divorce Lawyer | Santa Maria Family Law Attorney

It’s a trick question. You do not want to find the absolute best divorce lawyer or attorney in Santa Maria, California There are a large number of divorce lawyers in Santa Maria that would do an every bit as fine effort for you. It would undoubtedly be impossible to figure which one is the “best.”

The actual issue for you, the Santa Maria divorce consumer, is how to choose just one of those Santa Maria top-notch divorce attorneys at the proper levels of representation and price for the facts of your specific case – while keeping away from every one of the common, and in some cases unsafe, pitfalls of the Santa Maria divorce lawyer selection choice.

If you know what those pitfalls are (I will certainly tell you in this blog post) and if you have the appropriate perspective, particularly that you intend to make your Santa Maria divorce lawyer fit your instance and not permit the lawyer to require your instance to fit his/her inflexible practice profile, then you boost significantly your possibilities of nailing the Santa Maria divorce lawyer hiring choice. Getting you through that choice efficiently is the purpose of this article.

To start with, let’s list the 4 factors to avoid:

1. Avoid Do-It-Yourself Divorce:

It is entirely possible, repeat POSSIBLE, to download totally free family law documents from California’s judicial council or family court websites. Those totally free divorce documents are going to be blank, obviously. You can at that point try to finish and record the documents at your local Santa Barbara County divorce court by yourself without specialist help. This is feasible – however highly unlikely, very challenging, complicated, aggravating and extremely slow.

DIY divorce would be effectively unattainable, and not wise even to try, in any kind of  complex or contested family law case. It would be highly unlikely to be a success if you have minor children of the marriage or have any kind of assets or debts to be listed in the event or have custody, visitation or support arrangements in your matter. It would certainly be risky in a case involving domestic violence. DIY would likewise be difficult if you work or if you position any sort of value on your own time. Family law documents and procedures are made by attorneys to perplex you to ensure that you work with – a lawyer.

Please excuse me if I do not invest excessive time on the DIY danger. My experience on the cutting edge of California divorce for the past 40+ years is that individuals that begin the divorce procedure with the intent to try to obtain a totally free divorce are going to  try Do-It-Yourself divorce no matter what. For one reason or another, most likely economic, there is absolutely nothing I‘ve been able to find to convince them not to.

Do It Yourself in Family Law is consistently fake affordability. You WILL probably screw it up, and screwed-up cases are a lot more difficult and really expensive to remedy and complete. Do not play this game. The system is made by attorneys to perplex you and require you to hire a divorce lawyer. There are currently affordable alternatives readily available– see below. Do not go it alone in Divorce or Family Law.

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

An uncontested divorce is simply one in which the participants will not be disputing any kind of issues, including the divorce itself. The participants do not have to be happy and they do not have to care for each other. They are either totally or generally in agreement on all issues and are wise enough to understand that standard full-representation divorce attorneys (with big retainers and billable hrs) would be the only victors if they contested reasonably insignificant issues in their divorce.

Conventional complete representation by a neighborhood Santa Maria divorce lawyer is when that lawyer will represent you in all parts of your divorce case. It is highly likely to be a good professional service, yet it is expensive.

If you have a disputed case, a complicated case, a high-value case or a case that entails domestic violence or the threat of domestic violence, complete representation by a Santa Maria divorce lawyer is NOT to be evaded. It is a necessity.

A contested case signifies that you and your spouse/partner are contesting ANY issue in the case. A complicated case contains legal complexities such as tax issues, current business issues, a special needs child of the marriage or any one of many additional complex legal scenarios. 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 greater, that is a high-value case.

If you believe that you have a disputed,complicated or high-value case, you do. Work with an expert and expensive Santa Maria divorce lawyer for complete conventional representation. Search for 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 require conventional complete representation by a Santa Maria divorce lawyer. In fact, under those conditions, complete legal representation by a Santa Maria divorce lawyer becomes a danger to your economic position. Stay clear of it.

Obviously, if you call or email a conventional Santa Maria divorce lawyer, they will not tell you that you do not require their complete representation service. In fact, they will try to scare the crap out of you by informing you that you completely require their service and that your case will get screwed up without it.

That might happen– even in a non-DIY case. I’ll tell you next how to stay clear of perhaps 90+% of the prospective danger of getting your case screwed up if you do not go DIY and you DON’T hire a conventional Santa Maria divorce lawyer on a complete representation basis.

Your case might likewise perhaps get screwed up if you DID hire a complete representation Santa Maria divorce lawyer. That’s likewise not probable, but it could possibly take place.

However, what will DEFINITELY take place if you hire a conventional complete representation Santa Maria divorce lawyer to manage your uncontested divorce or family law case is that you will get screwed economically. Your case may be dealt with very well, but you will overbuy needless services and you will overpay for them.

There’s no need for that to take place any longer. Your parents had few other alternatives on their family law hiring choices. Your grandparents had no other alternatives. You have lots of legitimate alternatives to make your Santa Maria uncontested divorce lawyer hiring choice based upon the nature and facts of your case, not upon the BMW payments of Santa Maria divorce attorneys. Keep reading.

3. Avoid Unqualified Unregulated Online Divorce Mills:

This is without a doubt the most significant threat you encounter in your hiring choice in terms of damage to your future legal and economic security. Non-lawyer online divorce is a huge market. And it is extremely unsafe to your legal and economic future.

Online divorce mills provide slick websites, wicked-cool divorce software applications, charges lower than MOST attorneys, no legal advice, no legal understanding, no professional licensing, no legal education, no code of ethics, no malpractice insurance, no understanding of Santa Barbara County divorce procedures, no regional understanding about Santa Barbara County rules of court, regional Santa Barbara County documents, regional practices or the policies of specific regional judges in the Santa Maria area and no professional interest in you or your case. And all within an entirely uncontrolled Wild-West market rampant with all kinds of incompetence, price scams, and up-selling.

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

See the Online Divorce Association of America’s website for a very good assessment of just some of the more typical frauds and up-sells to be found in the online divorce market.

If you employ an online divorce mill, you’ll always 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. Nobody will carry out any kind of analysis on your case to secure you and any minor children from future legal or financial damage. Customer support will be dreadful because it doesn’t have to be anything else. You will never ever be able to consult with anybody at an online divorce mill as it is very likely that none are located in Santa Maria or even in California

If you work with an online divorce mill thinking you will conserve yourself a few dollars and you and your household end up paying for their errors 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 most recent mistake to avoid in your Santa Maria divorce lawyer hiring choice.

However, the prospective harm here is not huge– nowhere near the damage done routinely 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 work with a Santa Maria divorce lawyer you found on a mass-lawyer finder platform, you’re going to overpay to some extent, depending upon just how much the lawyer is paying the lawyer finder platform, but not as terribly as if you had actually employed a conventional complete representation Santa Maria family law lawyer directly.

Undoubtedly, you do not wish to hire a conventional complete representation Santa Maria divorce lawyer you find on a mass-lawyer platform. That would compound your over-payment, but the crucial aspect here is that you do not wish to hire a conventional complete representation Santa Maria divorce lawyer to manage your easy uncontested divorce, no matter where you find that lawyer!!

The danger with hiring a Santa Maria divorce lawyer that you stumble on ONLY on a mass-lawyer platform is that you’re employing a second-rate Santa Maria divorce lawyer– a drone who just stands in line with all other Santa Maria divorce attorneys and HOPES that s/he will get your trade but does nothing to differentiate himself or herself from the Santa Maria lawyer-crowd. That lawyer does nothing to influence you that s/he is the one-of-a-kind solution to your case. You do not wish to have that lawyer.

You could do with a Santa Maria divorce lawyer who is creative, strong, distinct, stylish and business-savvy. In fact, why would you work with a Santa Maria divorce lawyer to safeguard your own legal and economic interests when s/he does not even look after his/her own business interests strongly and decisively? You’re trying to find a divorce lawyer who purposefully sets himself or herself apart from the Santa Maria lawyer-crowd and does NOT blend in by signing up with Avvo and doing nothing else.

Mass-lawyer finder platforms like Avvo are cost-free to sign up with, which is why every divorce lawyer in Santa Barbara County will have joined. So you ought to not disqualify a Santa Maria divorce lawyer only because s/he has an Avvo account.

However, you ought to not think that such a Santa Maria divorce lawyer is very good or business-savvy either. The problem is that while these mass-lawyer platforms are cost-free for the lawyer to sign up, the lawyer must then begin to pay constantly increasing charges on a bid-basis, always battling versus other regional Santa Barbara County divorce attorneys, to be seen on the leading page of the platform’s website. If that lawyer doesn’t pay extra, s/he’ll be on page 3 or 5 of the mass-lawyer website in even a medium-sized town. If that lawyer doesn’t keep bidding up his/her charges, she’ll not get sufficient business to keep up.

It’s a winner-take-all system with the leading very few attorneys in each town taking almost all the business– based on just how much advertising charges they can pay– not based on how good they are or on how they have actually configured their offerings to match your case. The barrier to that me-too lawyer getting your business is the quantity of cash s/he is prepared to pay to get it, not the quality and distinctiveness of his/her service offerings.

If that me-too divorce lawyer in Santa Maria pays more to the mass-lawyer finder company and keeps paying more, s/he’ll get a featured position on the platform’s website and will get more cases, but his/her expenses of working will constantly rise while his/her charges are reasonably set by the flat demand for consumer law services such as divorce.

The Santa Maria divorce lawyer who plays the Avvo pay-to-play game will always require increasingly more lower revenue cases just to keep up with business expenses. You do not want that business-foolishness in somebody you will trust with your legal and economic future.

And yes, that lawyer is going to use the same brain to look after your case as s/he used to screw his/her own business into the ground.

How to Find the Best Santa Maria Divorce Lawyer – Santa Maria Divorce Lawyer | Santa Maria Family Law Attorney

So above are 4 factors to keep clear of: DIY divorce, traditional full-service lawyer representation in easy uncontested cases, unlicensed and uncontrolled online divorce mills and boring me-too drone attorneys who are truly bad at law practice business.

So what do you in fact look for in a Santa Maria divorce lawyer?

Before I tell you, I wish to set the stage by giving you two impressive statistics that I did not believe when I first saw them. These are game-changers in the legal profession and you really need to make the most of them in your Santa Maria divorce lawyer employing 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 Maria 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 Maria divorce attorney:

1. Licensed local Santa Maria divorce attorney (not an unlicensed out-of-state online divorce mill);
2. Offers unbundled services in uncontested cases– this indicates that you only pay for the legal services your case requires. 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 examine your docs before they are filed, determine problem concerns in your case and recommend the very best alternatives based upon legal advice and regional understanding. If you call a lawyer and ask about unbundled services and you can tell they do not know or do not want you to know, just hang up. They do not yet get it. Move on. Do not inform them.
3. Uses online divorce software that enables you to log into a client portal and inputall of the personal data 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 datain your case. Also, there’s no 50-page paper 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 Maria 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 Maria lawyer-crowd. You’re looking for someone with style who stands out, not melds in. 1-800-DIVORCE is exclusive in Santa Maria. There is only one 1-800-DIVORCE lawyer in Santa Maria. Check here or complete the web form below to see if Santa Maria 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 Maria:

Ventura, Bakersfield, Oxnard, Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Santa Clarita, Visalia, Fresno, Lancaster, Burbank, Palmdale, Clovis, Inglewood, Salinas, Los Angeles, Pasadena, Torrance, Downey, El Monte, Long Beach, Norwalk, West Covina, Fullerton, Anaheim, Garden Grove, Pomona, Huntington Beach, Orange, Santa Ana, Costa Mesa