As a divorce lawyer with a solo practice, I offer clients personalized service and reasonable fees. Maintaining an office with low overhead expenses translates into a lower hourly rate for my services.
I particularly enjoy doing collaborative divorce and mediation. In those cases, I work in partnership with my clients to achieve a settlement that works for both divorcing spouses and their children. I like collaborative and mediation because those processes empower the client and enable us to work together to find creative, “outside the box” solutions. Collaborative and mediation are also much more economical for the client, since those processes eliminate the need for writing voluminous legal papers and spending monumental hours in court.
When collaborative or mediation is not possible, and clients are doing a litigated (court-based) divorce, I sometimes team up with an attorney colleague, particularly if my client’s spouse has hired a large law firm. This gives my client the best of both worlds: I can still keep the fees reasonable, yet the client has the benefit of two or more attorneys working on the case. When my colleague and I work jointly, the client gets charged just one – not two – hourly rates. This gives the client the resources of a large law firm, yet still keeps the divorce affordable.
© Arnold D. Cribari 2015
