How to Find the Best Divorce Lawyer in Virginia Beach Virginia?  - Virginia Beach Divorce Lawyer | Divorce Attorney Virginia Beach

It’s a trick question. You do not want to get the best divorce attorney in Virginia Beach, Virginia There are several divorce attorneys in Virginia Beach that would likely do an equally excellent effort for you. It would undoubtedly be impossible to decide which one is the “very best.”

The real question for you, the Virginia Beach divorce buyer, is how to choose just one of those Virginia Beach best divorce attorneys at the appropriate levels of assistance and expense for the facts of your specific circumstances – while steering clear of all of the common, and occasionally dangerous, mistakes of the Virginia Beach divorce attorney hiring decision.

If you recognize what those mistakes are (I will advise you in this blog post) and if you have the correct mindset, specifically that you want to make your Virginia Beach divorce attorney fit your situation and not enable the attorney to require your situation to fit his or her inflexible practice profile, then you enhance significantly your opportunities of nailing the Virginia Beach divorce attorney employing decision. Getting you through that selection effectively is the purpose of this post.

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

1. Avoid Do-It-Yourself Divorce:

It is conceivable, repeat POSSIBLE, to download cost-free family law forms from Virginia’s judicial council or family court sites. Those cost-free divorce forms will be blank, of course. You can then attempt to complete and file the forms at your neighborhood City of Virginia Beach divorce court by yourself without expert assistance. This is feasible – nevertheless highly improbable, extremely difficult, confusing, irritating and incredibly time-consuming.

DIY divorce would be effectively unattainable, and not sensible even to attempt, in any kind of  complicated or disputed family law action. It would be highly improbable to be effective if you have minor children of the marriage or have any kind of property or financial debts to be listed in the case or have custody, visitation or support arrangements in your proceedings. It would absolutely be ill-advised in a matter entailing domestic violence. DIY would likewise be tough if you work or if you position any type of worth on your own time. Family law documents and procedures are developed by attorneys to puzzle you to ensure that you hire – an attorney.

Please excuse me if I do not spend way too much time on the do it yourself danger. My experience on the cutting edge of California divorce for the past 40+ years is that people that start the divorce process with the intent to attempt to get a free divorce are going to  attempt Do-It-Yourself divorce whatever. For some reason, most likely financial, there is nothing I have actually been able to discover to encourage them not to.

Do It Yourself in Family Law is typically false economy. You WILL almost certainly screw it up, and screwed-up proceedings are a lot more difficult and really expensive to fix and finalize. Do not play this game. The system is developed by attorneys to puzzle you and require you to hire a divorce attorney. There are now cost-efficient alternatives offered– see below. Do not go it alone in Divorce or Family Law.

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

An uncontested divorce is merely one in which the parties will not be disputing any kind of issues, including the divorce itself. The parties do not need to be happy and they do not need to care for each other. They are either entirely or generally in agreement on all issues and are sensible enough to realize that standard full-representation divorce attorneys (with big retainers and billable hours) would be the only winners if they disputed reasonably inconsequential issues in their divorce.

Conventional complete representation by a neighborhood Virginia Beach divorce attorney is when that attorney will represent you in all aspects of your divorce case. It is highly likely to be a good service, however it is high priced.

If you have a disputed matter, a complicated matter, a high-value matter or a matter that involves domestic violence or the threat of domestic violence, complete representation by a Virginia Beach divorce attorney is NOT to be avoided. It is a requirement.

A disputed matter means that you and your spouse/partner are contesting ANY issue in the matter. A complex matter consists of legal complexities such as tax issues, active business issues, a special needs child of the marriage or any one of countless other complicated legal situations. A high-value case means that your marital estate is large. There is no specific dollar limit. Certainly, 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. Work with an expert and high priced Virginia Beach divorce attorney for complete conventional representation. Search 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 Virginia Beach divorce attorney. In fact, under those circumstances, complete legal representation by a Virginia Beach divorce attorney ends up being a threat to your financial position. Stay clear of it.

Obviously, if you call or email a traditional Virginia Beach divorce attorney, they will not tell you that you do not require their complete representation service. In fact, they will attempt to terrify the crap out of you by informing you that you absolutely require their service and that your case will get screwed up without it.

That could happen– even in a non-DIY case. I’ll inform you next how to stay clear of potentially 90+% of the potential danger of getting your case screwed up if you do not go DIY and you DON’T hire a traditional Virginia Beach divorce attorney on a full representation basis.

Your case could likewise potentially get screwed up if you DID hire a full representation Virginia Beach divorce attorney. That’s likewise not probable, but it could possibly occur.

Nevertheless, what will DEFINITELY occur if you hire a traditional complete representation Virginia Beach divorce attorney to handle your uncontested divorce or family law case is that you will get screwed financially. Your case might be handled effectively, but you will overbuy needless services and you will overpay for them.

There’s no requirement for that to occur anymore. Your parents had few other alternatives on their family law employing choices. Your grandparents had no other alternatives. You have lots of legitimate alternatives to make your Virginia Beach uncontested divorce attorney employing selection based upon the nature and facts of your case, not upon the BMW payments of Virginia Beach divorce attorneys. Read on.

3. Avoid Unqualified Unregulated Online Divorce Mills:

This is by far the biggest threat you encounter in your employing selection in regards to damage to your future legal and financial security. Non-lawyer online divorce is a big market. And it is incredibly dangerous to your legal and financial future.

Online divorce mills provide slick websites, wicked-cool divorce software, fees 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 City of Virginia Beach divorce policies, no regional knowledge about City of Virginia Beach guidelines of court, regional City of Virginia Beach documents, regional practices or the policies of specific regional judges in the Virginia Beach area and no professional interest in you or your case. And all within an entirely uncontrolled Wild-West market widespread with all sort 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 Virginia 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 – walk away from cash already invested? You are at their whim and you are entirely unguarded. And they know it!

See the Online Divorce Association of America’s website for a great assessment of merely a few of the more typical scams and up-sells to be experienced in the online divorce market.

If you hire an online divorce mill, you’ll constantly be dealing with low-level, inexperienced, indifferent, high turn-over staff, call center staff members and folks in India, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Mexico or some other state. No one will carry out any kind of analysis on your case to safeguard you and any minor children from future legal or monetary damage. Client support will be terrible since it doesn’t need to be anything else. You will never ever be able to meet with anybody at an online divorce mill as it is highly likely that none are located in Virginia Beach or even in Virginia

If you hire an online divorce mill believing you will conserve yourself a few dollars and you and your family end up paying for their mistakes for years, that is NOT a cheap 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 latest mistake to stay clear of in your Virginia Beach divorce lawyer employing decision.

Nevertheless, the potential harm here is not massive– 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 Virginia Beach divorce attorney you found on a mass-lawyer finder platform, you’re going to overpay to some extent, depending on just how much the lawyer is paying the lawyer finder platform, but not as severely as if you had actually hired a traditional complete representation Virginia Beach family law attorney directly.

Obviously, you do not want to hire a traditional complete representation Virginia Beach divorce attorney you find on a mass-lawyer platform. That would intensify your over-payment, but the crucial factor here is that you do not want to hire a traditional complete representation Virginia Beach divorce attorney to handle your easy uncontested divorce, no matter where you find that lawyer!!

The danger with employing a Virginia Beach divorce attorney that you find ONLY on a mass-lawyer platform is that you’re hiring a mediocre Virginia Beach divorce attorney– a drone who simply stands in line with all other Virginia Beach divorce attorneys and HOPES that s/he will get your trade but does nothing to set apart himself or herself from the Virginia Beach lawyer-crowd. That lawyer does nothing to influence you that s/he is the unique resolution to your case. You do not want that lawyer.

You want to have a Virginia Beach divorce lawyer who is creative, strong, distinct, classy and business-savvy. In fact, why would you hire a Virginia Beach divorce lawyer to oversee your own legal and financial interests when s/he does not even care for his or her own law practice interests strongly and decisively? You’re searching for a divorce lawyer who purposefully sets himself or herself apart from the Virginia Beach 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 join, which is why every divorce lawyer in City of Virginia Beach will have signed up. So you ought to not disqualify a Virginia Beach divorce lawyer only because s/he has an Avvo account.

Nevertheless, you ought to not think that such a Virginia Beach divorce lawyer is extremely intelligent or business-savvy either. The issue is that while these mass-lawyer platforms are free of charge for the lawyer to enroll in, the lawyer must then start to pay continuously increasing fees on a bid-basis, constantly contending against other regional City of Virginia Beach divorce attorneys, to be seen on the top page of the platform’s website. If that lawyer doesn’t pay more, 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 or her fees, she’ll not get sufficient business to keep up.

It’s a winner-take-all system with the top extremely few attorneys in each town taking almost all clients– based upon just how much advertising fees 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 trade is the amount 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 Virginia Beach pays more to the mass-lawyer finder company and keeps paying more, s/he’ll get a highlighted position on the platform’s website and will get more cases, but his or her costs of doing business will continuously rise while his or her fees are reasonably set by the flat need for consumer law services such as divorce.

The Virginia Beach divorce lawyer who plays the Avvo pay-to-play game will constantly require more and more lower revenue cases simply to keep up with sales costs. You do not want that business-foolishness in someone you will rely on with your legal and financial future.

And yes, that lawyer is going to use the very 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 Virginia Beach Divorce Lawyer – Virginia Beach Divorce Lawyer | Divorce Attorney Virginia Beach

So above are 4 situations to keep away from: do it yourself divorce, conventional full-service lawyer representation in easy uncontested cases, unlicensed and uncontrolled online divorce mills and uninspiring me-too drone attorneys who are truly bad at the business of law practice.

So what do you actually try to find in a Virginia Beach divorce attorney?

Before I advise you, I want to set the stage by giving you 2 remarkable data that I did not accept when I initially saw them. These are game-changers in the legal profession and you really need to take full advantage of them in your Virginia Beach divorce lawyer hiring 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 Virginia Beach 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 Virginia Beach divorce attorney:

1. Licensed local Virginia Beach divorce attorney (not an unlicensed out-of-state online divorce mill);
2. Offers unbundled services in uncontested cases– this signifies that you just purchase the legal services your case needs. You will typically do your own filing of docs at court and schedule the service of filed docs on your spouse/partner. The divorce lawyer will evaluate your docs before they are filed, determine problem issues in your case and recommend the best alternatives based upon legal advice and regional knowledge. If you call a lawyer and inquire about unbundled services and you can determine they do not understand or do not want you to understand, simply hang up. They do not yet get it. Move on. Do not educate them.
3. Uses online divorce software that enables you to log into a client portal and enterall of the personal data 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 informationin your case. Likewise, 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 Virginia Beach 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 Virginia Beach lawyer-crowd. You’re looking for someone with style who stands out, not melds in. 1-800-DIVORCE is exclusive in Virginia Beach. There is only one 1-800-DIVORCE lawyer in Virginia Beach. Check here or complete the web form below to see if Virginia Beach 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 Virginia Beach:

Chesapeake, Norfolk, Hampton, Newport News, Alexandria, Washington, D. C., Raleigh, Baltimore, Cary, Durham, Fayetteville, Wilmington, Philadelphia, Greensboro, High Point, Winston-Salem, Allentown, Edison, Elizabeth, Newark, Jersey City, New York City, Charlotte, Paterson, Yonkers, Stamford, Pittsburgh, Bridgeport, New Haven, North Charleston