Most divorce attorneys charge between $200 and $350 per hour. That fact could become a real obstacle in your divorce (and can even drive you a little crazy), unless you find ways to deal with it effectively. Here are some tips that I think will help you come to grips with this difficult reality.
Take a Macro Look at the Hourly Fees.
Charging by the hour creates an enormous misconception about how a lawyer’s time is used. For example, if an attorney charges $285 per hour, it creates the impression that each hour they spend on behalf of clients is worth $285. Nothing could be further from the truth. When I look back on my cases, even the cases where I think my clients achieved a priceless outcome, I realize that many of the hours I spent on the case were not worth anything near that amount.
Much of the time on the case is spent reviewing documents, listening to the client’s story about what has happened, describing the process to the client, going over ground rules, etc. Very likely, my client could find people to do some of those things for $15.00 per hour. Those tasks, by themselves, have little value.
On the other hand, when I look back on my most successful clients, the ones where clients made great decisions during their divorce, I realize that some of the moments that I spent with clients created a great deal of value for them.
A tangible example might be a time when I, often in conjunction with the other team members on the case, came up with a creative financial solution that saved the clients thousands of dollars in future taxes or transaction costs. The work spent on developing that option may have been less than an hour or two but may have led to savings that were worth more than ten times my hourly rate.
More significantly (and this is the most abstract part of our business), there are moments when the assistance of an attorney may be nearly priceless. When a client is struggling with the emotions of the divorce in a way that is causing them to mistreat their spouse and inadvertently harm their children, this may be when they need the most help from their “advocate.”
A good divorce attorney can sometimes help them rethink what they are doing; sometimes in subtle ways, like truly listening to a client, helping them see the impact of their behavior, urging them to get the help they need to address emotional barriers, or simply making sure they understand their options. The impact of that work may not be obvious at the time, or even for many years. Yet, when they look back, the clients come to realize that certain decisions that they made, hopefully with skilled guidance from their attorney, helped them achieve a priceless outcome for their family.
Telling your spouse you want to get a divorce may be the most difficult conversation you will ever have. The decisions you make during this critical time will affect you and your family for the rest of your life.
While there are many things to consider, my view after working with divorcing families for 30 years, is that these three considerations are the most important.
1. Make sure you are doing the right thing.
If you are unsure about whether divorce is your best option, make sure that you have fully explored all options. If you think counseling might work, take the time to find a counselor with experience and expertise in marriage saving. In addition, make sure you are aware that other divorce saving options, apart from counseling, that have been found to work, including programs like Retrouvaille, or programs offered through local churches and synagogues.
2. Make sure you understand all of your options before you move forward with the divorce.
Divorce is no longer a “one-size fits all” process. Today there are many divorce process options and you owe it to yourself to find the option that will work best for your family. Simply going to a traditional divorce attorney and starting a traditional divorce can be like going to a surgeon before you explore whether surgery is necessary. If possible, speak with professionals with knowledge and experience in all of the primary options, such as mediation and Collaborative Law, to make sure that you are getting accurate information about the choices available. To find professionals who can competently explain all options, go to www.divorcechoice.com and www.collaborativelaw.org.
3. Take some time to determine your most important goals.
One of the biggest mistakes people make when they are starting the divorce is to get locked into short-term thinking and ignore their real priorities. The sense of urgency in their current situation causes all of their attention to focus on putting out fires rather than achieving their most important goals. As a result, they look back on their divorce many years later wondering why things did not work out the way they had planned. To avoid that problem, take some time to really think about what will matter the most to you in your future life and make sure all of your divorce decisions focus on these important long term goals.
It is never easy to think about ending a marriage. However, if you can focus on preserving what is most important in your life, you can make your future less difficult. Divorce is about the end of an important relationship and the beginning of a new life. The decisions you make at the beginning will make a tremendous difference in the quality of that new life.
While divorce is often expensive, when you look back on your divorce many years from now, the financial cost is not likely to be your most significant concern. If things do not go well during your divorce it is more likely that your real regrets will have more to do with the “real cost” of divorce; the impact on your children and on your emotional state.
Can this “real cost” of divorce be reduced? Yes, but it takes hard work.
The cost of your marriage.
Of course, the first thing to think about is whether the divorce is necessary. If you are considering starting a divorce that you think can be avoided, make sure you explore all of your options before you give up on something you have worked to build. I am not talking about continuing to be unhappy in your marriage. I am only urging you to think about whether finding a way to become happy within the marriage may be a possibility and to consider whether the idea of happiness outside the marriage could be a mirage.
If you have determined that the marriage cannot be saved (and I realize this may not be within your control), your next focus needs to be on how to avoid the real “cost” or damage that divorce can create.
The cost of conflict to your family.
Almost all divorce cases settle before going to trial. However, many people experience conflict during the settlement that can cause long term damage to their co-parenting relationship or their ability to move forward with their lives.
So how do you achieve a settlement without high conflict and still protect yourself in the divorce process? Good settlements require a high degree of commitment. If you, and the professionals you hire, are truly committed to reaching a settlement that works for you and your children, you can achieve an outcome that reduces conflict and protects your other important interests.
While your commitment will make the most difference, you also want an attorney that is committed to getting a good settlement as well. Almost all attorneys today will say they want to help you achieve an acceptable settlement. However, the difference between wanting a good settlement and committing to settlement is night a day. If getting the best settlement, and avoiding the real “cost” of divorce is important to you, you should consider hiring an attorney that is fully committed to settlement.
Collaborative attorneys are attorneys who commit, in writing, to achieve a settlement that is acceptable to you. At the beginning of their case, both Collaborative attorneys sign a written document stating, in essence, that if they cannot get an acceptable settlement, they will be fired.
The commitment to settlement causes everyone to use methods that are more effective; including full transparency, negotiation based on big picture goals, working with other professionals for more efficiency and reducing the posturing and arguing. To learn more about the Collaborative Process, and to find attorneys who are experienced in this area, go to www.collaborativelaw.org or www.divorcechoice.com. 
Part 4: Skilled attorneys are essential to a successful Collaborative Divorce.
A Collaborative Divorce is one in which the husband and the wife each retain a lawyer for settlement purposes only.
When attorneys are required to work for settlement only, it is critical that they have the skill to negotiate successfully without the threat of going to court. Attorneys are generally trained to advocate for clients through use of argument and a variety of legal strategies, including the threat of court. Collaborative Divorce removes those tools from their toolbox, requiring the attorneys to use other, less damaging, conflict resolution methods.
While the Collaborative Commitment–the agreement that the attorneys will withdraw if the matter goes to court–is designed to rein in some of these instinctive legal tactics, the withdrawal agreement by itself is not enough. If the attorneys are not skilled in helping clients achieve settlement without the use of arguments or threats, they may fall back on some of these old habits. In those situations, the Collaborative Commitment will not necessarily lead to better outcomes.
Collaborative negotiating skill is, in my humble opinion, a rarer and more difficult skill for attorneys than argument and threat. So, how do clients find attorneys who possess this skill? In general, it is a combination of research and intuitive judgment. Through research most clients can find attorneys in their community with training and experience in Collaborative Divorce. In addition, most Collaborative attorneys will provide either free or low cost consultations to allow clients to gauge, first hand, whether they have the commitment and skill required to help them achieve success in a Collaborative Divorce.
Finding the most suitable Collaborative attorney is, in many cases, only part of the equation. One of the great advantages of Collaborative Divorce is the ability to work with other professionals who are, in most instances, better suited to help clients achieve the best outcomes, and often at a lower cost. While divorce is a legal process, there are financial, parenting and communication elements that may, in the end, be more important and more complex than the legal elements. Having financial professionals and mental health professionals on the team that help clients achieve success in these areas, could be the most important factor in helping them achieve a better outcome.
This information will be discussed in the upcoming blogs. However, if you want information on this now, go to www.collaborativelaw.org and www.ousky.com.
Read Part 5, here. Part 3: Collaborative Divorce helps create better outcomes by requiring commitment at the beginning of the process.
A Collaborative Divorce is one in which the husband and the wife each retain a lawyer for settlement purposes only.
One of the reasons that the process works well is that it causes both parties to make the necessary commitment early in the process. Almost all divorce cases, (approximately 95%) settle out of court. However, too often the settlement comes after the parties are near the point of financial and emotional exhaustion, sometimes creating flawed settlements and resentment. Many people reach a point of committing to a settlement only when they are nearly out of money, or they are told by their attorneys or the judge that moving forward will not be successful. These reluctant settlements, while better than a trial, come at too great of a price and can lead to a rocky future for the family.
In a Collaborative Divorce, both parties and their attorneys sign a Participation Agreement at the beginning of the process that challenges clients to focus on commitment to settlement before they are financially and emotionally drained. Because both parties are asked to engage their attorneys for settlement purposes only, they are forced to think about their commitment to settlement at the very beginning of the case, and not “on the courthouse steps.” Both clients understand that each of them must make a commitment at the beginning of the process. Early commitment from each party leads to better settlements that are made before financial and emotional resources are fully exhausted.
Early and deep client commitment is a big part of why people often get better outcomes in a Collaborative Divorce, since skilled Collaborative Professionals can help them commit, not only to settlement, but to other important matters, such as improving skills in the areas of parenting, communication or financial acumen.
However, this is only a part of the equation. In order to be successful, committed clients need to be guided by professionals that are skilled in helping them achieve the best outcomes in this new environment. This information will be discussed in the upcoming blog. However, if you want information on this now, go to www.collaborativelaw.org or www.ousky.com.
Read on to Part 4 by clicking here Part 1: What is Collaborative Divorce?
Collaborative Divorce has spread rapidly throughout the world during the past two decades and has helped thousands of families achieve better outcomes. This series of blogs will focus on how people facing divorce can achieve better outcomes through a Collaborative Divorce.
This first blog starts by providing this simple definition of Collaborative Divorce:
A divorce in which the husband and the wife each retain a lawyer for settlement purposes only.
That’s it. While Collaborative Divorce has many other elements, this one feature defines the process. As simple as this seems on the surface, it is easy to get confused about what Collaborative Divorce means for two reasons:
First, because the word “collaborative” is an adjective, (essentially meaning “working together”), that has been around for centuries, the word collaborative, (without a capital c), could be used to describe many divorces where people work together. However, in legal terminology, the phrase Collaborative Divorce (capital C), has come to define a specific divorce process in which the attorneys are retained for settlement purposes only. In a Collaborative Divorce, unlike a traditional negotiation, the lawyers must withdraw if the divorce cannot be resolved out of court.
Second, while using lawyers for settlement purposes only is the one defining feature, Collaborative Divorce often has many other elements that add greatly to the success of Collaborative cases. For example, Collaborative Divorce is often a team process in which the clients work with financial neutrals and mental health professionals in addition to attorneys. In addition, Collaborative Divorces generally use a very different method of negotiation called “interest-based negotiations.” These features allow people to get better outcomes in their divorce but are not part of the definition of Collaborative Divorce. Some Collaborative Divorces do not include all of these features.
The basic defining characteristic of Collaborative Divorce, (the fact that the lawyers must withdraw if the matter goes to court), was introduced by Stu Webb, a Minnesota attorney in 1990. Stu’s simple but profound idea was that committing to settlement only would open the door to a new way of doing things that would help families get better outcomes. Indeed that is exactly what has happened. Great innovations like working with full interdisciplinary teams and using interest based bargaining are two of the common feature of Collaborative Divorce that have evolved as part of the Collaborative Divorce process as a result of this great commitment.
Understanding that Collaborative lawyers are hired for settlement purpose only is the first step in truly understanding Collaborative Divorce. The next step is to understand why that commitment is so essential to the success of Collaborative Divorce. Understanding the strength and value of the Collaborative Commitment is covered in the next blog in this series. For immediate information on these and other questions about Collaborative Divorce, go to www.collaborativelaw.org or www.divorcechoice.com.
Read Part 2 of this series
Collaborative divorce is often considered the “respectful way to divorce.” This doesn’t necessarily mean that the divorce is always amicable (although it can be), it means the divorce is done with grace and courtesy. Here are some (of the many) ways in which collaborative divorce can be respectful.
- Cooperation. Resolutions are reached through cooperation and collaboration. Confrontation is inefficient and usually ineffective – it is therefore not a part of this process.
- Honesty. All information is gathered in collaborative divorce through voluntary, complete, and good faith processes. Clients and professionals work together to make sure everyone has all the information needed to make decisions in their own best interest.
- Input. In a collaborative divorce, all voices are valued and heard. Even if it is hard for a client to express their feelings or thoughts on elements of the divorce, the opinion of everyone is valued. Collaborative professionals help ensure this input.
- Creativity. In collaborative divorce, we know there are no one-size-fits all resolutions. We work together to come up with complete and unique outcomes that fit clients’ lives moving forward.
- Support. Clients are not alone in the collaborative process. Every client has legal support with an attorney. Clients can also have neutral financial and parenting specialists as needed. Mental health professionals are also available in the process to help with the communication and emotional challenges of divorce.
- Values. Collaborative divorce starts with development of goals. All the work and resolutions go towards meeting these goals. Clients’ values and interests are key to the process.
- Health. Divorce ends with a future beginning. The collaborative process keeps the overall health and well-being of the couple and the children at the forefront. That health is a focus throughout the process and moving forward.
An attorney representing a client going through collaborative divorce is much more than a legal adviser. The attorney is often a confidant, emotional support system, sounding board, voice of reason, teacher, and financial adviser. Indeed, a collaborative divorce attorney is a “guide.”
The Sherpa people in Nepal inhabit the area surrounding Mount Everest. They have become natural guides up the mountain due to their native knowledge, experience in the region, and superior genetic disposition to function in high altitudes. Like lawyers in divorce – they have gone through this before and they are skilled in the tools necessary for success. Most individuals only experience divorce once. A good collaborative attorney has experienced divorce many times – as a guide. They have honed their skills and can “sherpa” or guide clients through this process in an efficient and successful manner.
I often ask my clients to think back about their wedding. How much of the wedding was legal? It is often a spiritual, emotional, familial, and sometimes a financial endeavor. The legal piece, however, is more minimal. Perhaps you signed some papers a day or two later and mailed them into the state? A divorce is not all that different. Attorneys should advocate and guide their clients to make decisions in their own best interest. However, the attorney role, much like the wedding itself, is multi-faceted and often not solely focused on legal advocacy. A divorce may feel like a long uphill road, like climbing a mountain. A client needs to find an attorney who they trust in all the roles that attorney will play. A good collaborative attorney should be with you on that journey – guiding you up that path to resolution and peace. 
Most of us are familiar with the concept of holistic medicine. The importance and interdependence of body, mind and spirit in our overall health is becoming accepted in the world of healing. Less well known, however, is the Collaborative divorce process, which utilizes a holistic approach to help struggling families heal. Collaborative practice uses a team of experts who work with the parents and their children to achieve deeper resolution.
Contrary to popular belief, divorce is not just a legal event. As countless couples in the throes of separation can attest, accusations about the past and fears about the future can make constructive conversation impossible. Frustration sets in and one or both parties “lawyer up.” So begins the all-too-often lengthy, unpleasant and expensive process of litigation, during which parents are often discouraged from communicating with one another.
Fortunately, another option exists. In Collaborative divorce, both parties have Collaboratively-trained attorneys providing guidance throughout the process. In addition, they jointly use a team of neutral professionals to address their communication, financial, parenting and emotional issues. A series of meetings takes place in which these interdependent issues are discussed and resolved without court involvement. In this way, divorcing parties maintain more control over both the process and the outcome.
Integrative medicine uses a team of specialists who communicate with one another to achieve optimum health for the patient. The Collaborative divorce process parallels this model by bringing together a team of divorce experts. This more humane method of dispute resolution can facilitate healing and result in a healthier post-divorce family.