How to Find the Best Divorce Lawyer in Surprise Arizona?  - Divorce & Family Law in Surprise

It’s a trick question. You don’t want to find the absolute best divorce lawyer or attorney in Surprise, Arizona There are a large number of divorce lawyers in Surprise who would do an every bit as very good undertaking for you. It would be impracticable to figure out which one is the “very best.”

The real issue for you, the Surprise divorce client, is exactly how to identify just one of those Surprise top-notch divorce lawyers at the perfect levels of assistance as well as expense for the facts of your individual case – while staying clear of every one of the usual, as well as sometimes dangerous, pitfalls of the Surprise divorce attorney hiring choice.

If you understand what those pitfalls are (I will tell you in this post) as well as if you have the proper mindset, particularly that you want to make your Surprise divorce attorney fit your situation as well as not allow the lawyer to compel your situation to fit his or her inflexible practice profile, then you boost substantially your opportunities of nailing the Surprise divorce attorney employing choice. Getting you through that choice successfully is the objective of this blog post.

To start with, let’s specify the 4 things to steer clear of:

1. Avoid Do-It-Yourself Divorce:

It is conceivable, repeat POSSIBLE, to acquire free family law forms from Arizona’s judicial council or family court internet sites. Those free divorce forms are going to be uncompleted, of course. You can then try to finish as well as file the forms at your regional Maricopa County divorce court on your own without expert aid. This is feasible – but extremely improbable, very difficult, complicated, irritating as well as incredibly slow.

DIY divorce would certainly be essentially impossible, as well as not sensible even to try, in any type of  elaborate or contested family law case. It would certainly be extremely improbable to be a success if you have minor children of the marital relationship or have any type of property or financial obligations to be itemized in the event or have custody, visitation or support agreements in your matter. It would absolutely be unwise in a case involving domestic physical violence. DIY would certainly likewise be tough if you work or if you position any type of value on your own time. Family law documents as well as procedures are developed by lawyers to puzzle you so that you hire – an attorney.

Please excuse me if I don’t invest excessive time on the DIY danger. My experience on the cutting edge of California divorce for the past 40+ years is that individuals who start the divorce process with the intent to try to get a free divorce are most likely to  try DIY divorce no matter what. For some reason, probably economic, there is absolutely nothing I‘ve been able to discover to convince them not to.

DIY in Family Law is consistently fake affordability. You WILL almost certainly screw it up, as well as screwed-up proceedings are a lot more problematic as well as expensive to fix as well as conclude. Do not play this game. The system is developed by lawyers to puzzle you as well as compel you to hire a divorce attorney. There are currently affordable options available– see listed below. Do not go it alone in Divorce or Family Law.

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

An uncontested divorce is merely one in which the parties will not be challenging any type of issues, including the divorce itself. The parties 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 issues as well as are sensible enough to understand that conventional full-representation divorce lawyers (with huge retainers as well as billable hrs) would certainly be the only victors if they contested reasonably unimportant issues in their divorce.

Conventional complete representation by a neighborhood Surprise divorce attorney is when that attorney will represent you in all parts of your divorce case. It is extremely likely to be a very good professional service, but it is really 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, complete representation by a Surprise divorce attorney is NOT to be evaded. It is a requirement.

A disputed case denotes that you as well as your spouse/partner are disputing ANY issue in the case. A complex case includes legal intricacies such as tax issues, current business issues, a special needs child of the marital relationship or any one of numerous other complicated legal situations. A high-value case means that your marital estate is very large. There is no particular dollar limit. Definitely, if you have a high 7-figure net marital estate or greater, that is a high-value case.

If you suspect that you have a disputed,complex or high-value case, you do. Hire an expert as well as high priced Surprise divorce attorney for complete conventional representation. Look for 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 require conventional complete representation by a Surprise divorce attorney. In fact, under those circumstances, complete legal representation by a Surprise divorce attorney ends up being a threat to your economic position. Avoid it.

Of course, if you call or email a conventional Surprise divorce attorney, 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 advising you that you absolutely need their service and that your case will get screwed up without it.

That could well transpire– even in a non-DIY case. I’ll tell you next how to stay away from possibly 90+% of the possible danger of getting your case screwed up if you don’t go DIY and you DON’T hire a conventional Surprise divorce lawyer on a complete representation basis.

Your case might likewise possibly get screwed up if you DID hire a complete representation Surprise divorce lawyer. That’s likewise not likely, but it could possibly occur.

However, what will DEFINITELY occur if you hire a conventional complete representation Surprise 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 unneeded services and you will overpay for them.

There’s no need for that to occur any longer. Your mothers and fathers had few other options on their family law employing options. Your grandparents had no other options. You have many legitimate options to make your Surprise uncontested divorce attorney employing choice based upon the nature and truths of your case, not upon the BMW payments of Surprise divorce lawyers. Continue reading.

3. Avoid Unqualified Unregulated Online Divorce Mills:

This is by far the most significant threat you deal with in your employing choice in terms of damage to your future legal and economic safety. Non-lawyer online divorce is a huge market. And it is incredibly dangerous to your legal and economic future.

Online divorce mills provide slick websites, wicked-cool divorce computer software, charges lower than MOST lawyers, no legal advice, no legal knowledge, no professional licensing, no legal education, no code of principles, no malpractice insurance coverage, no knowledge of Maricopa County divorce policies, no local knowledge about Maricopa County guidelines of court, local Maricopa County documents, local practices or the policies of individual local judges in the Surprise region and no expert interest in you or your case. And all within a completely unregulated Wild-West market widespread with all sort of incompetence, price scams, and up-selling.

Online divorce mill charges average about $300, but what you get for that $300 fee is extremely little– simply prepared Arizona divorce forms. Any other services delivered are all up-sold on the basis that when 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 realize it!

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

If you hire an online divorce mill, you’ll always be contending with low-level, untrained, indifferent, 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 type of analysis on your case to protect you and any minor children from future legal or financial damage. Client support will be awful due to the fact that it doesn’t have to be anything else. You will never ever have the ability to meet with anybody at an online divorce mill as it is likely that none lie in Surprise and even in Arizona

If you hire an online divorce mill thinking you will save yourself a few dollars and you and your family end up spending for their mistakes for several 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 most recent pitfall to steer clear of in your Surprise divorce lawyer employing choice.

However, the possible damage here is not significant– nowhere near the damage done routinely 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 Surprise divorce lawyer 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 severely as if you had hired a conventional complete representation Surprise family law lawyer directly.

Clearly, you don’t want to hire a conventional complete representation Surprise divorce lawyer you find on a mass-lawyer platform. That would intensify your over-payment, but the crucial element here is that you don’t want to hire a conventional complete representation Surprise divorce lawyer to handle your basic uncontested divorce, no matter where you find that lawyer!!

The danger with employing a Surprise divorce lawyer that you stumble on ONLY on a mass-lawyer platform is that you’re working with a below average Surprise divorce lawyer– a drone who simply stands in line with all other Surprise divorce lawyers and HOPES that s/he will get your trade but does nothing to distinguish himself or herself from the Surprise lawyer-crowd. That lawyer does nothing to convince you that s/he is the best solution to your case. You don’t wish to have that lawyer.

You want to get a Surprise divorce lawyer who is creative, vibrant, one-of-a-kind, classy and business-savvy. In fact, why would you hire a Surprise 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 strongly and decisively? You’re trying to find a divorce lawyer who intentionally sets himself or herself apart from the Surprise 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 Maricopa County will have joined. So you need to not disqualify a Surprise divorce lawyer only because s/he has an Avvo account.

However, you need to not consider that such a Surprise divorce lawyer is very intelligent or business-savvy either. The problem is that while these mass-lawyer platforms are free of charge for the lawyer to register with, the lawyer must then start to pay continually increasing charges on a bid-basis, always battling versus other local Maricopa County divorce lawyers, to be seen on the top 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 charges, she’ll not get adequate cases to keep up.

It’s a winner-take-all system with the top very few lawyers in each town taking almost all clients– based upon how much marketing charges they can pay– not based upon how excellent 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 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 Surprise pays more to the mass-lawyer finder platform 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 working will constantly rise while his or her charges are reasonably set by the flat need for consumer law services such as divorce.

The Surprise divorce lawyer who plays the Avvo pay-to-play scheme will always require increasingly more lower profit cases simply to keep up with sales costs. You don’t desire that business-foolishness in someone you will rely on with your legal and economic future.

And yes, that lawyer is going to utilize the 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 Surprise Divorce Lawyer – Divorce & Family Law in Surprise

So above are 4 problems to refrain from using: DIY divorce, conventional full-service lawyer representation in basic uncontested cases, unlicensed and unregulated online divorce mills and boring me-too drone lawyers who are actually bad at law practice business.

So what do you in fact seek in a Surprise divorce lawyer?

Before I tell you, I want to set the stage by offering you 2 impressive data that I did not accept 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 Surprise divorce lawyer selection 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 Surprise 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 Surprise divorce attorney:

1. Licensed local Surprise divorce attorney (not an unlicensed out-of-state online divorce mill);
2. Offers unbundled services in uncontested cases– this means that you just pay for 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 evaluate your docs before they are submitted to court, determine problem concerns in your case and recommend the best options based upon legal advice and local knowledge. If you call a lawyer and inquire about unbundled services and you can determine they don’t understand or don’t desire you to understand, simply hang up. They don’t yet get it. Move on. Do not educate them.
3. Uses online divorce software that allows you to log into a client portal and inputall of the details in your case.  This not only conserves money and time, but it in fact empowers you in your own case. You are the source of all informationin your case. Likewise, 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 Surprise 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 Surprise lawyer-crowd. You’re looking for someone with style who stands out, not melds in. 1-800-DIVORCE is exclusive in Surprise. There is only one 1-800-DIVORCE lawyer in Surprise. Check here or complete the web form below to see if Surprise 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 Surprise:

Glendale, Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe, Mesa, Chandler, Gilbert, Tucson, Henderson, Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, El Cajon, Escondido, Temecula, Murrieta, Moreno Valley, Chula Vista, San Diego, San Bernardino, Victorville, Rialto, Carlsbad, Riverside, Oceanside, Fontana, Corona, Rancho Cucamonga, Ontario, Pomona, Irvine