How not to behave towards your divorce attorney and other helpful tips

In yesterday’s blog post, we spent a great deal of time going through how to go through the process of hiring a family law attorney to represent you in your divorce. Then, we transitioned into tips and tricks on building a solid relationship with your attorney. Today, we will shift gears to advise not to behave towards your attorney. Finally, we will get some advice on proceeding in several different areas in your divorce.

Treat your attorney like (gasp!) a regular person.

Behaving with your attorney is like behaving with a neighbor, member of your church, or a person at work- be decent, and be honest. Number one- do not lie to your attorney about anything. If possible, don’t lie to anyone about anything, but specifically, your attorney is someone that you should be upfront and honest about everything. I understand that aspects of your case may not be all that pleasant to discuss. I also understand that you are tired and upset and not all that happy in the first place to have to talk to an attorney. With that said, your interests (and that of your children) are not served well by you lying to your attorney. Do your part to build a solid attorney-client relationship by being honest- no matter how difficult it may be.

The failure to disclose information to your attorney is akin to lying.

Part of honesty is disclosing information and not hiding it from your lawyer. Think of your attorney almost in the same way as a parent when you were a child. If you were in a tight spot growing up, you needed to tell your parents about it to help you avoid problems associated with the tight spot you were in. If you tried to go it alone and solve the problem without your parent’s help, you were probably going to make it worse.

The same applies to your attorney-client relationship. If you don’t tell your attorney about the time you were arrested for DUI last year, they can’t help you minimize the negative impact of that on your case. There are all sorts of bad situations we get ourselves into, but ultimately that is part of life. Your spouse probably has a wart or two on their record to be concerned about. Disclose alarming facts early and often so that nothing comes as a shock for your attorney.

Communicate, communicate, communicate

If you hire the attorneys with the Law Office of Bryan Fagan to represent you in your divorce, you can expect that we will communicate with you as frequently as possible and as your case requires. You need to know what is going on in your case, and we need to get your feedback and instruction in multiple areas.

When your attorney reaches out to you on a subject related to your divorce, you need to respond to the email or voicemail message and get back in touch with the lawyer as quickly as possible. We know you’re busy. Newsflash- we are too. We’re working on your case, and it cannot move along in the process without your stamp of approval and instruction. The lawyer you hire doesn’t take on the responsibility of decision-making in your case. You are the only person in a position to tell us how your case should move along. We can advise on subjects, but we can’t make decisions for you.

My goal is always to return emails and phone calls within twenty-four hours of receiving them. It is reasonable to expect that you can do the same as a client. It may not seem like a big deal, but you need to treat correspondence from your attorney as important no matter the subject matter. If you regard any information from your attorney as important, you will not run into this problem.

Take it easy with the phone calls and emails to your attorney

This isn’t me telling you that lawyers don’t like to hear from our clients. That’s not true. In fact, in a contest between those who call all the time and those who never call, I would take the client who calls all the time. Too little communication can doom your case. I overthink conversation can hurt your case as well, however.

First and foremost, you can be more efficient in contacting your attorney by storing up to several questions and saving them for one phone call. This is opposed to calling your attorney every time a new thought pops into your head. Secondly, every time you call your attorney, you are being billed for doing so. Your attorney does not want to drain your retainer or payments on phone calls that did not need to be made.

Another concern that I, as an attorney, have when a client calls me multiple times a day is that it either indicates a lack of faith in me as an attorney or indicates that the client doesn’t understand some aspect of their case. I am okay with teaching you about your case. I feel like it is part of an attorney’s job description. However, if you feel like your attorney is not handling your case adequately, it may make more sense to hire a new attorney rather than to submit your current attorney to a round of intense phone calls daily.

Take some of the legwork out of lawyering and help organize your case.

I think we have all hired people in various areas of our lives to take the burden off of us in that area. For example, my wife and I have an accountant do our taxes each year. Could she and I do the taxes ourselves? Sure- we’ve done them before. However, with two kids at home and nary an accounting degree between us, it makes sense to shift the burden of doing our taxes to a professional with our oversight.

We end up electronically dumping several documents on our accountant, and she goes through them and figures out income, deductions, credits, etc. She does the dirty work for us, we pay her money, and she submits our neat tax return. This is not how divorce works, however.

In a divorce, your attorney is there to give advice and explanation and make recommendations. However, you are responsible for achieving your own goals and making the necessary decisions to accomplish those goals. In that spirit, you shouldn’t simply dump your entire life upon your attorney and expect them to sort it all out and develop the strategy above.

My advice is to organize your life, your documents, and your thoughts so that you can have a productive conversation or meeting with your attorney on those subjects. Arriving at your attorney’s office the day before discovery is due with a box full of junk for your lawyer to sort through is not a smart move. Begin by becoming better organized and proceed as if your attorney needs all the help they can get with your case. This allows you to save your attorney the time necessary to do this for you ( which saves you money) and allows you to stay up to date and educated on the status of your case. We call a “win-win” in the law business).

A series of “How To’s” will be the topic for tomorrow’s blog post from the Law Office of Bryan Fagan, PLLC

Divorce has several different areas that require your simultaneous attention. To learn more about those areas, please head back to our blog tomorrow to get an overview of them.

In the meantime, if you have any questions about the subject matter we discussed today or any other in family law, please do not hesitate to contact our office. We offer free of charge consultations to our community members six days a week. It would be an honor to meet with you and answer your questions.

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At the Law Office of Bryan Fagan, PLLC, the firm wants to get to know your case before they commit to work with you. They offer all potential clients a no-obligation, free consultation where you can discuss your case under the client-attorney privilege. This means that everything you say will be kept private and the firm will respectfully advise you at no charge. You can learn more about Texas divorce law and get a good idea of how you want to proceed with your case.

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