When you decide to proceed with a family law case, whether it involves a dissolution of marriage, determination of parentage, restraining orders, or post dissolution matters, always remember to hire an experienced family law attorney. What does that mean?
1. An experienced family law attorney is an attorney that focuses their legal practice on family law matters, has been involved in practicing family law for many years, is familiar with the Court systems, judicial officers and the communities of family law attorneys.
Don’t confuse aggression with experience. In fact, the more experienced an attorney is, the better they are at avoiding “aggression”. Aggression is a misplaced adjective for experience. In my experience, the more “aggressive” an attorney is, the costlier your family law matter will be. And, while you might enjoy reading your attorney’s aggressive, threatening. and hostile letters to opposing counsel, an “experienced” family law attorney will deflate the aggression and move your matter forward efficiently, effectively and professionally.
2. An experienced family law attorney will effectively communicate with you.
What does that mean? That means, your attorney will, in detail, explain to you how the legal process works, the stages, and the pros and cons of each and every action or inaction that can be taken. Your experienced attorney will take the time to discuss the legal implications, the possible out-comes (because there are no guarantees in family law) and the mental, emotional and financial implications at every stage.
3. An experienced family law attorney will expect you follow their professional advice.
If you have to ask why your experienced family law attorney expects that you follow their advice, remember, you hired your experienced family law attorney for a reason and are paying them to be your experienced family law representative. Also, know that as your experienced family law attorney, we have the experience of knowing the consequences of not following our advice. This is another area your experienced family law attorney will discuss with you as well.
4. An experienced family law attorney will show you the roadmap of your case, from start to finish.
We will also show you the detours in your case that will occur if you do not follow our advice. Sure, we cannot control all things and cannot control what the opposing party/counsel intends to do, however, having an experienced family law attorney and having disclosed all is-sues, we can generally gauge the detours a case can take and confront them early on to avoid later lengthy litigation. A family law matter can move like the 10 freeway across the country, or like your vascular system, with more twists and turns, that following the same path is almost impossible.
5. An experienced family law attorney has a knowledge base in many areas of the law.
I find one of the most interesting aspects of family law is the inter-relationship between this area of law and many others such as real estate, partnership, corporate, just to name a few.
6. Your experienced family law attorney will have had clients similar to your situation.
Re-member however, no two cases are alike, no matter how similar they may appear.
For more information and to schedule your consultation, please call The Law Offices of Steven B. Chroman, P.C., at 661-255-1800 or visit us at www.chromanlaw.com.
Mr. Chroman is a Trusted Advisor Award Winner and named Top 100 California Attorney’s with over 26 years of experience and local service and a 2021, 2022 2023 & 2024 Super Lawyer. You can purchase Mr. Chroman’s best-selling Divorce Workbook at: www.amazon.com/Preparing-Divorce–considering-separation.
This article was originally published in Santa Clarita Magazine as part of our firm’s mission to make family law information more accessible to the Santa Clarita community. Read the full feature and others at santaclaritamagazine.com.