What Your Lawyer Expects From You

Although I do not care for the site's name, Best/Cheap divorce lawyers, I have to admit that its What your lawyer expects from you is very good and especially its rules:

Rule 1: Everything is not an emergency; your divorce lawyer is not on call 24 hours a day.
Rule 2: Your family lawyer is not a psychologist.
Rule 3: Communicate honestly with your lawyer.
Rule 4: This is not L.A. Law — don’t expect your divorce lawyer to do something just because you saw it on TV.
Rule 5: Your family lawyer didn’t create and can’t change the system.

Do read the full article.

I have been putting out my Divorce Handbook for my clients so that they know what is and is not an emergency. Not every attorney does that but they should tell you what to expect and to understand what you are going through. (If they are not, then ask why they are not). That also helps out with Rule 4.

I cannot understate the importance of Rule 3. My job is to take of the bad things (after all, the good things take care of themselves). If I do not know what and where the problems are, then the client is keeping me from doing the job I was hired for.

I probably should not be as surprised as I am by people who do not understand that the General Assembly has passed laws that are carried out in the courts. I cannot change the law, neither can the judges. Neither can we just ignore those laws. If you do not like the law, please tell your State Representative or your State Senator.

By the way, I think there is a connection between Rule 2 and 5. Most of the problems between the parties cannot actually be treated by the legal system. Do not even let me start on the failings of the child custody part of the family law proceedings. The system was inherited from the courts of equity (for wanting to know about equity read this or this) who inherited it from the ecclesiastical courts and all that happened long before the word psychological got in any dictionary. We are good at dividing property but that was always a talent of the law courts.