in hiring a family law attorney you

should follow

two parallel tracks

one being more professional and the

other being personal

so from a professional perspective

you want somebody who’s

experienced somebody who’s been

practicing a while somebody who

is familiar with the basics of the law

who’s engaged in all aspects of the law

so

they’ve engaged in negotiations they’ve

been to court potentially they’ve

mediated they’ve tried cases

in this way they have a full

understanding of the gamut of family law

you want somebody who has expertise in

family law you don’t want somebody who

practices another area of law primarily

and says okay they’re your friend

they’ll help you and they’ll take on

your family law case

that’s very nice of them and it’s very

nice for you that you may have a friend

willing to do that but that’s not going

to service you well you want somebody

whose expertise and primary area of

practice is family law

you also want somebody who’s familiar

with the county that you’re in

sometimes you get

a little bit of a different approach on

certain cases or areas of law that’s

different in one county than in another

county and when you’re looking for a

family lawyer you should find somebody

who is familiar with the county they

know the judges they know how the judges

are going to approach a case and the

judges will know them because when your

lawyer stands up in front of a judge you

want that judge to be able to say hello

ms winters so nice to see you again it

gives you as a client and a litigant a

level of comfort that the judge is

familiar with you

so that’s on the professional side

on the personal side

you want someone that you can work with

well

together you’re going to be talking

about very intimate aspects of your life

what your marriage was like your

approach on raising children your

financial issues those are probably the

most intimate parts of everybody’s life

and you want a lawyer that

doesn’t intimidate you someone that you

connect with personally

and there are a lot of good lawyers out

there but not all lawyers are somebody

that you can connect with

so take advantage of the consultation

opportunity not only to ask questions

about somebody’s professional approach

to cases but to see if you mesh if your

personalities get along because

you’re going to need that when you’re

dealing with

your divorce which is such an intimate

and can be a very painful process

so we have a number of different models

um relative to the payment of fees

of course we have the traditional model

where

a client will provide a retainer an

initial retainer which is a sort of a

deposit and then we bill hourly our fees

are commensurate with

other firms and other

areas of law

and commensurate of course with our

skill and experience

but we also have a model which i’ve been

very successful recently

which is called

a capped

model so what that is it’s almost like a

la carte so you can choose a specific

thing

in family law maybe it’s to prepare

papers or just appear in court or file a

motion and what i do is i assign

a value to that as to how much that

would cost and you could sort of pay as

you go

it’s not really a flat fee it’s more of

a capped fee because sometimes i’m able

to resolve whatever it is that we’re

doing even more quickly and there would

be a refund but it’s a cap in the sense

that the fees never go

over that amount i found that that’s

very successful for both lawyer and

client

from my perspective quite frankly it’s

one less

aggravation in terms of billing and

administration and in terms of the

litigants the clients are very happy

because there’s some cost containment

they know what they’re getting into

and if they could afford it they could

afford it if they can’t maybe they get

you know they choose a different option

or go in a different direction also we

offer payment plans so if a matter costs

x amount of dollars okay maybe you pay a

little bit now and something per week or

per month and generally speaking like to

keep those amounts those monthly amounts

or weekly amounts low because i’d much

rather have

the client feel comfortable and have it

be something that they could afford over

time rather than it being a problem

for me and for them that’s the way we do

our our fees