Visit us at divorceandyourmoney.com for the #1 divorce resources in the USA and get personalized help. Learn about coaching services here.
Thank you for listening! Find a transcript of this episode below.
How do you pick a divorce attorney if you don't know anyone? A lot of people just guess, they'll search online, type in “divorce attorney near me”, and that's the attorney you pick. Well I don't think that's necessarily the best option. I wanna give you some guiding principles in terms of how you can pick a good divorce attorney without having to know anyone in advance. A divorce attorney is one of the most important, if not the most important, decision you make during the divorce process.
Finding a good attorney can be tough, I mean how do you know that that firm that you're going to call is really good? Are there any ways that you can narrow down your search to at least improve your chances of getting a good attorney? The way I think about some of the information in here is I know an attorney, so I'm here in Dallas, and I know an attorney who might be looking for someone in Florida. And I'm going to tell you the same methods that the good attorneys will use to recommend an attorney to someone if they aren't in the right state.
It's actually not that complicated, there's a few things that you can look for that will very easily help you pick a very good, very competent attorney. I'm gonna go through those ... Four issues that I'm gonna go through, and I'm just gonna go through them quickly, and this should be your framework if you don't know what attorney to choose, or if you're looking for a new attorney for any reason.
Here they are, the first one is they should be a member of the AAML. That is the American Academy for Matrimonial Lawyers, AAML. Every family lawyer knows what that is, and if they don't that's a problem. But there's a website, aaml.org. If you find ... The AAML is a group of attorneys, they vote each other in as I understand it, but they all have a minimum level of experience and they are all respected by their peers. So what you can do is you go to the AAML website, you type in your city and state, and they will provide a list of their fellows within them.
Of 1,000 attorneys, maybe 20 actually get into the AAML in a given place, and so most, if not all, but most of the attorneys in that group are very, very good and very respected. So you go the website and you pick one out.
The second thing that you should do is look for board-certified attorneys. Many states, not all states, but many states have a state board that certifies an attorney in a particular practice area. Could be family law, could be personal injury, could be trial law, could be education law, could be estate planning. But if your state has a board certification you should type in “board-certified family lawyer Missouri”, or “board-certified family lawyer California”, or “board-certified family lawyer Virginia”, and the attorneys who pass the board exams, it's always a very rigorous process and only a small percentage of people pass it. I think the number for Texas is less than 3% of attorneys in an area pass the board certification.
There's minimum requirements they have to make in terms of length of time, experience, etc. But if you do that, then those people will also often be very, very good attorneys. So we have number one is the AAML, number two is board certification.
Number three is you should, or can, ask another lawyer. If you know other attorneys, then they can help provide recommendations for you. This method is not foolproof, because everyone has their friends, and you can be steered astray. So if you ask an attorney I would still check number one and number two to make sure they fit those minimum criteria.
Then the fourth thing I want to recommend is reviews and testimonials. Check them out. If your attorney does not have reviews and testimonials, that can be a red flag. You need to see what other people are saying about that attorney. If they don't have any, that may be they're just not very good at their online marketing. But if they have a bunch of negative ones, you should read those negative comments, and conversely if they have lots of positive ones you should see what people like about that attorney. But you should check the reviews.
So the perfect attorney, if I had to find the perfect attorney, I would ask all of my lawyer friends that I have, I'd say, “Hey, can you recommend me a family law attorney?” I would double check to see if they're part of the AAML. If they are they will usually have that badge right on their website. I would check to see if they're board-certified, if they are that's awesome, it's right on their website. I would check their reviews, if they have lots of great reviews then that is perfect, and it's right on their website. And then if I have those four things, you are 95% of the time going to have a very, very good attorney in your corner.
You can still end up with someone who might not be a good fit for you, now that's a separate conversation, and actually in the store if you get the divorce quickstart guide, I have tons of resources on how to manage your attorney, making sure your attorney's doing the right things for you, and other elements of the attorney relationship that I haven't talked about for a while are all available in the store under the quickstart guide, which is the archives for the podcast. It has almost 50 hours of information, and it's one of the best resources available out there in terms of having a wealth of information at your fingertips.
I know some people who have listened to the podcast more times than I have, and they got it at the quickstart guide. There are questions about fit for your attorney, but if you get an attorney that has lots of good reviews, AAML, board-certified, and recommended from other attorneys, you are going to be most of the time, 95% of the time, in very good hands in terms of negotiating your book ... Or sorry, negotiating your divorce and the future settlement.
Now, there's something that I do want to bring to your attention, and sometimes people ask me, is they say, “Hey, can you recommend an attorney for me in city and state here?” Well, I'm very upfront with people, I have a handful of about 10 attorneys, less than 10 actually, across the whole United States that I've worked with closely for a while that I can truly recommend to you. You just happen to be in one of those areas for me to recommend someone to you, but I still get to recommend an attorney once or twice a week of that handful of people on the list.
That said, in a coaching call one of the things that we will do is we will go through these methods and help you narrow down that list of potential attorneys, or I'll follow up with you after a coaching call to say, “Hey, why don't you call these three firms or two firms, schedule an initial consultation, see what you like the best, and go from there.”
But ultimately I'm going to be doing exactly what I just went through with you. I'm gonna figure out where you live, I'm gonna go to the AAML website, I'm going to see if they're board-certified as well, I'm gonna check their reviews. And if I happen to know a lawyer in that part of the country I'm gonna ask my lawyer friends and say, “Hey, do you know anything about Jane Doe or John Smith?”
But it's not that much more complicated than what I just said. You need to ... There's no guarantee in this process unfortunately. It's tough, and it can be a challenge to find that attorney, and even if you do everything perfectly, it can be off. And you might end up with someone who's not good for you.
But if you follow these four steps, you're in a very good position going forward, and if you're still trying to choose your attorney, or you're still early in the divorce process, or maybe you just want an initial consultation with someone, these are the steps that I would tell my best friend to follow to find someone good for them.