I practice in family law and it’s a broad-spectrum practice where I practice in divorces, custody cases, which include paternity cases. Sometimes it’s modification of custody, modification of spousal maintenance. Those are probably my largest area of practice. I also have drafted pre-nuptial agreements and post-nuptial agreements for parties. I do a fair amount of evaluative work, including mediations which is sometimes facilitative mediation, but often I’m asked to do evaluative mediation.

Either in the form of just being a sole evaluator in advising parties about what they should do to settle their case. I do it as a social early neutral evaluator, as a financial early neutral evaluator, and then there’s a process in Minnesota in some states they call it a parenting coordinator. In Minnesota we call it a parenting consultant and I do that kind of work. And I always consider it a little like an Uber parent, where the parties cannot resolve situations, they cannot make the decisions, they get so involved in the conflict that they can’t see the forest for the trees, and the parenting consultant is there to kind of ferret out what are the issues to try to help parties resolve it first and then if you can’t get a resolution then you make a decision. And it’s not a final decision – I mean it can be final unless they appeal it to the court, so there’s an appellate process with that.

And I’ve also done some guardian work and work as a special master, that’s like being appointed to judicial officer for a case on a short-term basis to do a defined scope of work. I think when you hire an attorney you have to hire somebody that you like and you trust. I think you want to know that they’re going to tell you, “No, don’t do that,” kind of behavior or “Don’t write that email,” or “Let’s correct that situation.” So, you need to have somebody that’s gonna give you direction, so that your chance of being successful on your case is really important. Particularly in those cases where the high conflict custody cases are there, then you can really help your client by, “No, don’t get so involved in the conflict, let’s see what the children need here.”

I think those are really important things. You clearly need an attorney that knows what the law is and is comfortable doing research on new law, and is comfortable advocating zealously for their clients. I don’t believe and maybe there’s lots of attorneys that do, but I don’t believe in taking a position that is outside of the law, or outside of the best interests of the children in proceeding. So then if that is a request that my client that has – sometimes we talk about whether or not that’s in the best interest of their case about how to proceed. So, we’ll have lengthy and detailed discussions about what’s appropriate here and why I have a concern about it. And so, we’ll try to make a decision about what’s appropriate and in the best interest of their case.