I provide a free initial consultation for family law matters. This gives me an opportunity to meet with a potential client, learn about their situation and decide how I can most effectively represent them. I then prepare a detailed representation agreement that describes the specific legal services that I will provide in that particular case along with a fixed fee for those services. In a prior post, I suggested five questions to help you choose a family law attorney. Below are five things to bring with you to an initial consultation to help you and the family law attorney evaluate your case. Read more of this post.
Hiring the right family law attorney for your case can make your divorce easier, less expensive and more peaceful. Attorneys and law firms have different structures, philosophies and billing models. When you consult with a divorce attorney, these five questions may help you choose the right attorney for you.
You can file for divorce in California if you have adequate grounds and meet the residency requirements.
California is a no-fault divorce state. Legally adequate grounds for divorce, under California Family Code Section 2310 are “incurable insanity” and “irreconcilable differences which have caused the irremediable dissolution of the marriage.” Residency for purposes of divorce requires that one party has lived in the state of California for the last 6 months, and in the particular county where the divorce will be filed for the last 3 months.
As an additional, optional, feature of my Los Angeles Divorce and Family Law Practice, my clients have 24×7 access to all of their case documents and calendar on our secure online site.
Simple- If you can access your email on the internet, you can access your account. To access your account, first, log in with a provided name and password. Then, you will see an overview of the most recent information, and tabs to click for messages, calendars, and uploaded files.
When you hire a family law attorney you usually pay for his time, neatly broken down into 6-minute increments. This is called hourly billing. Every month, you get a bill detailing the time that was spent on your case and how much this time has cost you. The more time the lawyer spends on your case, the more you pay. With hourly billing, you do not directly pay for the lawyer to resolve your legal issues or solve your problems, you simply pay for his time. At some point during your case, you may ask your lawyer, “how much more is this going to cost?” The typical response, if you are paying your lawyer by the hour, is that it depends on how much more time is required. This billing arrangement is unpredictable and rewards inefficiency. You never really know how much your divorce, custody, or support issue will cost until it is resolved. And the longer it takes the lawyer to accomplish a task, the more money you’ll be charged. Read more of this post.