Alex Hunt:
Hi, and welcome back to the Texas Family Lawyer Podcast. I'm Alex Hunt, managing attorney at Hunt Law Firm serving the Greater Houston area, and today I'm joined by David C. Adams. He is a senior associate attorney at Hunt Law Firm and he is the lead attorney at our League City office. Welcome, David.
David Adams:
Good morning. Thank you.
Alex Hunt:
David, we're going to jump right into it. We had part one of this series where we talked about how to choose the right divorce lawyer and so, if you are watching this on YouTube, you can go back a few months and you can find it. I'll also link it in the description. Today is part two. We're going to talk about the questions that you should ask in your initial consultation for a divorce. Number one is the questions that you need to ask yourself before you even stepped foot into the initial consultation.
David Adams:
Exactly. Some of the most important questions, I think, are probably the questions you ask yourself before you even get to the consultation. Most of the time the cases that we work, being divorced or child custody cases, typically, they're going to involve children. I think one really important question to ask yourself is, how much do you want to involve your children in the litigation? I often meet with clients or potential clients who will say, "I don't want my kids involved at all."
And then, I'll probably, in almost equal number, will encounter clients or potential clients who will say, "I want my child involved in the sense that I want them to have a voice. I want their opinion on, say, this child custody issue to be heard. I want the judge to know what it is that they want," and so, I think it's a very important question before you ever go meet with a lawyer, how much do you potentially want your child to be involved in that litigation and how much of it is necessary so that that way when you go and meet with a lawyer, you can have an honest conversation with them about how could we do that? What's the best way to do that? What's the most appropriate thing in those terms?
Alex Hunt:
And, I also think, what are you looking to get out of the process? We talked about this in the last one. I think the word you used was retribution. Are you looking for retribution? Are you looking for this to be painful for the other side? Are you looking for a bulldog or a shark? Somebody though that, when they're being a bulldog, they might also drive up costs, they might make things more contentious. Is that what you're looking for?
Or, are you looking for somebody that is going to be solutions oriented and is going to try to find that path of lease resistance, the person that's going to try to find solutions for you and, in the background, is also having concurrent planning of, if we have to go to court, "Damn sure I'm going to be ready for it." You want to ask yourself, "What do I need to get out of this process and how should that play into the search for my lawyer?"
David Adams:
That's exactly right. I think it's a great framework question to think about, "Do I want answers?" I meet with a lot of clients, especially in divorce cases where they feel like their marriage has fallen apart and I think they kind of just want to know why. Now, that's not always a question that I can answer for them and, oftentimes litigation won't necessarily do that but, if the question is, "Where has my spouse been spending all of our money," I might be able to answer that, but that's going to involve the discovery process and financial documents and possibly subpoenas.
Sometimes people come in and what they want is they just want it to be over with, right? They want a solution as quickly as possible to get themselves and perhaps their spouse out of a home that they're living in together, in a situation they don't want to be in, and so they're not so much focused on the why or the how but that's a very important thing because, as your potential lawyer, when you tell me things like that like, "Look, I want to try to get this over as quickly as possible. I want to try to figure out as many solutions as quickly as we can," then I can lay out the options for you how we might be able to best achieve that.
Similarly, if you come in and you say, "Look, here are some things that have happened. I'm not really sure what's going on and I want to know. It's important to me," or, "It's important to my kids," then I can lay out some options for you about the path that we need to take to try to do that and do that as quickly as possible.
Alex Hunt:
Well, when you're in that introspective mode, I think it's important to also look at your finances and say, "How much am I able to or how much am I willing to spend on this process?" Folks that don't have a lot of money or folks that have limited resources, they deserve to have excellent representation too. They deserve to have somebody who's fighting for them. It just might mean that there's going to be some of those options that might be available to folks that have unlimited resources, some of those things might be more limited for them but it doesn't mean that they don't get to have an excellent attorney.
And so, they need to have an idea before they set foot in the initial consultation of, "What am I looking for out of my lawyer? Am I looking for somebody who's going to go all out, is not going to run things by me, that's going to take every liberty, go into every account, look at every transaction, is going to waste no time and is going to spend every dollar I have? Am I looking for somebody who's going to be a little bit more affordable and that will allow me to guide the process as the client?" That's what I think most folks should be looking for, somebody who is solutions oriented and is going to have somebody who is guiding them, but the client is still driving the bus.
David Adams:
That's absolutely right and you just brought up the examples of financials and spreadsheets and, when we are doing a divorce, potentially all of that can matter. Is it possible that your spouse might've spent some money that they shouldn't have spent and that if we dig through thousands and thousands of pages of financial documents, we might find it? Perhaps, but it's definite that we're going to spend many attorney hours digging through those financial documents to maybe find something or maybe to not.
Honestly, in more cases than not that I work, I think people are suspicious of each other when they come to the table at the divorce process. I think what they end up finding out is that oftentimes things aren't quite as bad as they think that they are or the other person isn't quite as nefarious as they want to believe and so they're just spending money on what most people would probably say are normal things-
Alex Hunt:
Sure.
David Adams:
... like eating out and going to the movies and maybe shopping for clothes and so, a lot of times we can spend a lot of money finding out that there's not that much really to see there. And so, to your point, it is really important to think about some of those things and the costs that are associated with looking into some of those things and whether or not that's really worth it for you.
Alex Hunt:
And, there's the financial cost and folks need to look inside themselves and figure out, "What am I able to do?" They need to look at their finances. But, there's also the emotional cost, not only on them but on their kids as well. And so, putting aside the property piece, when you're looking at kid issues, who's going to get primary custody of the child or children? "Do I want this fight or am I willing to be a little bit more flexible?"
Those are really important questions because the stress that litigation can have on you, I don't just mean sitting inside the courtroom, I mean the protracted process from start to finish when you file your petition, you get your spouse served, all the way until the end of the case when the judge is giving you a verdict and everything in between, which might mean an amicus attorney is appointed, which is a third-party attorney that's going to tell the court what they think is in the best interest of that child.
That's going to be somebody who meets your child. It might be an in chambers interview with your child and the judge and, in some limited cases, we've seen this more lately, there's actually been court cases where the older children typically have been testifying in court. What are you willing to take on emotionally and are you finding the right lawyer that can help guide you through that process, not only legally. And, I don't mean you're looking for a lawyer that also has a side hustle as a therapist. I mean somebody that's going to guide you with compassion and understands that there's not only legal consequences for every action, but that you're a real person and that it has effects on you.
David Adams:
That's absolutely right. Everything that you just said is right and I would maybe just, while we're not therapists, I think that any decent family lawyer, trial attorney in family law, would not be doing their job if they didn't try as best they could based on their experience watching people and children and families go through this process to say, "Hey. You got to understand this is a big deal. It's going to be a big deal for you. It's definitely going to be a big deal for your kids. It's probably going to be a big deal for your spouse."
You said earlier about how this can last over not just one day in court, but it can last over months. Sometimes these cases last years. It is not a sprint, it is a marathon. Do you really want to go through the emotional toll and the pressure and the anxiety that most people experience when they go through this process for weeks, months, years in some cases, to get where it is that you think that you want to go? You just need to understand that those are some of the costs that are associated with that kind of litigation.
Alex Hunt:
Well, and they're important questions to ask yourself because it informs what you are then looking for in a lawyer and, if you want somebody who can just rote recite the Texas Family Code, that's certainly not going to be anybody with our firm and certainly wouldn't be anybody that I'm looking for. You're going to want to find a lawyer that understands not only how to paint a story in court but also maybe somebody that has a family themselves. I'm a dad, you're a dad. You understand the intricacies of what it's like to have a family. You want to have somebody that will understand that and will be empathetic and sympathetic to you.
David Adams:
Absolutely. And, it's not always my first go-to area of analysis but I will often have a client say, "Hey, would you do this?" And, I have to tell them, "Listen, they're not my kids. It's not my money, it's not my family but look, in my experience as a person, as a human, as a father, here's what I might want to think about when you get ready to make this decision," and, just try to empower the clients as much as you can so that they have a fair shot at having some kind of clue about what's coming.
Alex Hunt:
Absolutely. So, once you ask yourself those questions, then the next piece is to start doing some due diligence before you even set foot into the room with your potential lawyer or if you're interviewing a number of lawyers before you meet with them, is to start to ask questions and find answers about who that person is.
I think that that is a threshold question before you even set up a consultation. Who is this person? What is their educational background? For me, it's important, when we're hiring lawyers, is do they have life experience outside of just going to undergraduate, going to law school? Have they had other jobs before? I was a teacher, you were a teacher. We have a number of teachers. We have people that even did go from undergraduate to law school that have a wide variety of different life experiences that inform their ability to be a really great lawyer.
You can also look at what organizations they're part of. All the lawyers in our office are part of the Houston Bar Association, the Katy Bar Association, Fort Bend County Bar Association, Fort Bend Family Bar. These are organizations that we join not just because we want to have a whole bunch of organizations on our website but it's because of the people that we get to meet there and the knowledge that we gain there. We get to visit with judges, we get to know who they are as people, we get to know how they think and how they operate. We get to meet opposing counsel. We get to meet the lawyers on the other side, which is important not just because we are going to become buddies with our opposing counsel but, it's because we want to know who that person is. So, if there's something that we can do in your case that will help reduce costs or get you a better outcome, then we're going to do it and we want to know the people that we're going up against every day.
You want to do your due diligence and say, "Does this person just do family law and is their practice 100% dedicated to family law and the related areas?" I think a lot of people are impressed when they see a lawyer that is a jack of all trades and they say, "Oh, this is a Renaissance man or a Renaissance woman." I don't look at it that way necessarily. I want to have somebody who is focused on family law. I'm not going to a podiatrist to have heart surgery. I want to have somebody that knows the ins and the outs of family law and you can't do that if you are going from a family law consultation to an immigration law case to a criminal law hearing. It's too much knowledge. There's too much that you need to know about. So, due diligence, finding answers, figuring it out ahead of time is so incredibly important.
David Adams:
Absolutely. I would also say I think it's worth it to go out there and take a look at the lawyers' that you're going to meet with websites, right? I mean, not only do a lot of times will they have reviews from former clients but a lot of times it'll give you the personal background of the lawyer themselves and some of the things that you talked about, where they went to school, organizations that they're a part of.
Another thing that I is worth it is to go onto the state bar's website and see if they have a discipline issue, if they have any complaints. Because, if they do, you definitely want to give the lawyer a chance when you interview with them and do the consultation to speak to that and maybe clear that up.
I do think another thing that is really important when you're talking about doing your homework is thinking about, you mentioned earlier, people being a jack of all trades. The reason why it's so important to have somebody that specializes in family law in particular is just because family law is just broad and there are so many different areas that are within it. And, even within family law, we talked about in the last time that we met, there's complex property cases and business valuations and there are complex custody cases with custody evaluations and expert witnesses and everything in between. So, you definitely want to have somebody that specializes in family law and I think especially if you know going into a consultation, "Hey, I know that the fight here in this case is probably going to be about custody of our kids," then you want to go out and get somebody who's not only a family lawyer but somebody who's comfortable litigating custody cases.
In the same way, if maybe you don't have children or you feel like are probably in agreement about custody issues but the fight is going to be about the property division and maybe the valuation of a business that one of you owns, then you want a litigator who's not only a family law specialist but somebody that's comfortable with a complex property division. And so, those are the questions that you'd want to make sure that you ask them in the consult about how comfortable are they with those specific things.
Alex Hunt:
So, we've done our due diligence, we've done some introspection about the questions that we need to ask ourselves first. We're now in the room with the prospective lawyer and the very first question... And, we talked about as we were preparing for this, there are so many questions that we could think of that if we were in the shoes of the client that we would be wanting so we narrowed it down and the first question that you brought up was, "What do you need done?"
David Adams:
Absolutely. I, a lot of times, will find that the clients don't always know what they need and so, one of my jobs might be to ask them questions so they can figure that out and then I can present their options to them. In case you don't meet with somebody who's going to be able to pull that out of you, I think it's important for you to go into the consultation able to tell them, "Here's what I need."
For instance, in a divorce case, one of the first things I want to know is, "Can you two live together while this divorce is pending or are you two living together? Do we need you to have exclusive use and possession of this marital home? Do we need to have a hearing sooner rather than later?" One of the other big questions when children are involved, "Do you have any issues with this other person having possession and access to these kids? Do they have a drinking problem? Do they have a problem where they'll discipline the children with a belt that makes you uncomfortable," and so, we might need to have a hearing sooner rather than later so that we can put that before a judge and try to get you some kind of resolution.
Another really important thing is financial issues, right? "Do you have access to money or do you have access to credit cards? Do you have access to a car? Is there a reason why we might need to have a hearing sooner rather than later to tell a judge, 'Hey, Judge. We need interim attorney's fees. We need money so that they can pay the rent. We need money so that they can pay for a surgery that's coming up.'" Whatever those issues might be, those are all issues that oftentimes are presented at what we call a temporary orders hearing. But, if you need that stuff now, you need to communicate to that to your attorney in the consultation and then give them an opportunity to then say to you, "Okay. Here's the steps that we need to go through to get that done now."
Alex Hunt:
Absolutely. And, the next line of questioning I think you should have should be around costs because for a lot of people that is a threshold question, "Am I going to be able to afford this attorney?" And, I don't just mean for the first few months of this case, I mean for the long term of this case. And so, ask your lawyer very specific questions about... One of the questions I get, "How much is this going to cost?" That is an impossible question for me, as a lawyer, to answer if it's phrased like that.
Because, you're coming to me and it's like you're on the one yard line on the other side of the field and you're asking me, "Am I going to be able to score a touchdown?" "Well, I don't know. There's a million different things that are going to happen. There's going to be 20 plays between here and then." So, a better question is to ask, "If this happens, how much do you think it would cost approximately? If we have a temporary orders hearing, approximately how much is that going to cost? How much is it going to be if we do a deposition of my spouse? How much is it going to be if we do written interrogatories and requests for production of documents or we subpoena the kid's school or the therapist? How much are each of those pieces going to cost me?"
And, a lawyer should be able to give you a ballpark if you kind of lay out the facts and the way that you want this case to proceed, but if you just go to a lawyer and say, "I'm getting divorced, how much is this going to cost?" And, if a lawyer gives you a definite answer, I'd be very skeptical of that because it's really difficult to figure that out.
You should also ask your lawyer about how billing works. Most lawyers, including our firm, does hourly billing and each of the lawyers is at a different hourly billing rate so a lawyer with probably a little bit less experience or in an area of the state or of the country that's going to be a little bit lower cost, they're going to have a lower hourly rate. A lawyer that has more experience behind them or is in a higher cost of living area is probably going to have a higher hourly rate. Most lawyers, including our firm, will ask you for a retainer. A retainer is just an advanced fee deposit that is placed into an account and then whenever, our firm does billing twice a month, most firms do it much less than that but we do that because we want our clients to see what's going on throughout the process, then money is taken from that retainer and when you get to a certain point, you're going to be asked to replenish that retainer if there's more to go. If there's half a tank of gas and we've got to get to the destination and we need more than that half a tank and we need to replenish it back up, but not every law office works like that.
Some law offices, very, very few, especially ones that are experienced in contested litigation, do flat fees. For some that's an option. You want to ask how much those flat fees are when those fees are actually earned. You want to ask how the retainer works. Is it refundable? "If I hire the lawyer and tomorrow I fire the lawyer, am I going to get my full retainer back?" With our firm, you should. With most reputable firms, you should. You give a lawyer $10,000 and you fire them the next day and they say, "No. That's my money," that's a big problem because that lawyer hasn't done the work to earn it.
I would also ask about the team that's surrounding that lawyer. Make sure that your lawyer is not double billing for the work that's being done in the office. We have a team mentality. We have a variety of different lawyers with experiences. We have support staff. No one in our office is double billing, even though you might see multiple people on there. If I have an associate attorney that can draft a petition for half the cost as what it's going to take me, that they can do it just as well as me, I'm going to hand that off to an associate and I'll quickly review their work, make sure that it's up to par and then I'll file it. Why? Because I know it's going to be lower costs for our client.
What you don't want to have is a conversation where it's me and you and a support staff member in a room and we're all talking about the case and that is $1000 an hour conversation because everybody's billing for it. That is a recipe for an inflated bill. So, really get into the intricacies and, when you were looking at the engagement letter or we call it the legal services agreement, dig into the way that the financials work because it should all be laid out. What do you think?
David Adams:
That's all great points. I would say this, I've had a fair number of clients in my time of practice that have come to me because they're firing or getting rid of a former lawyer to try to hire us on flat fee cases. I would not speak ill of lawyers that charge flat fees necessarily but here's what I would caution people about with that.
At the end of the day, a flat fee is nothing more than the lawyer's best guess that the case is not going to cost as much as what the fee is and as soon as that guess is wrong and those fees now exceed the flat fee that you paid, they're either going to ask you for more money or they're going to have to withdraw from the case. And, the only reason why I say that I feel like people should be cautious about that is because there is a better way. The better way is to just pay a retainer and pay it to somebody reputable, that you know that if the case doesn't cost as much as the retainer, you're going to get that money back.
Alex Hunt:
[inaudible 00:24:59] your a lawyer, how often they do billing? Because, one of the things that you might see is a lawyer will take a retainer and then will go three months without billing you and so, you think, "Well, I've got $10,000 that's sitting there," "I've got $5,000," or, "I've got $20,000 sitting there in a retainer," and then all of a sudden you get billed for three months of work and not only is your retainer gone but your lawyer then says, "You actually owe me money," and it's because they're not billing regularly so you're not able to keep up with the work that they're doing. That's very difficult for clients to keep up with. It's the reason that our clients can expect the 15th of the month and the last day of the month they're going to be getting an invoice. It's a routine and they understand it and they can see how much is left in their retainer.
The thing you mentioned about flat fees, one of the things I've noticed is that there seems to be an incentive in the flat fees and there are some lawyers I know very ethical, very honest, they don't do this, but that there may be an incentive for that lawyer to, if say the parties are trying to go to mediation and ostensibly everybody agrees we should go to mediation but there's something in that lawyer's contract that they get paid $1000 if they have to go to a court hearing, all of a sudden we're getting a motion for mediation even though there's an agreement on it and we're going to court for something we wouldn't ordinarily need to because that lawyer wants to get paid his flat fee to go to court. So, there are upsides and there are downsides to flat fee. Like you said, I think that, if it were me, I would go with somebody that is billing regularly and billing honestly and is not getting upset if I'm asking questions about the bill.
David Adams:
Absolutely. And, I can't agree with you more about the billing. I would say this to anybody. If you go through this process and you do hire a lawyer and it's been 30 days and you don't have a bill, you need to reach out to them. You need to raise hell and you need to get a bill. If you don't or if the bill doesn't make sense to you, you need to think about switching lawyers then and there. If it's been 30 days and you haven't seen a bill, that's a problem.
Alex Hunt:
I agree. All right. The next question that you should ask in your initial consultation and, this is kind of broad, but you just want to know if your lawyer knows what they're doing. What kind of questions do you ask? How do you figure that out?
David Adams:
I think that kind of goes back to what we talked about earlier about what do you need done, right? If you need exclusive use or possession of the marital home and you need that now because you and your spouse can't live together, you need to express that. But then, the next part of that question is, "Okay. How do we do that?"
The reason why I say that is because part of that process is, "Well, how quickly do you need it?" I mean, look, if you need exclusive possession of your marital home because your spouse is potentially violent, maybe has a drinking problem, well then the fastest way to get you that is that we need to file a temporary restraining order, we need to attach an affidavit, ask for extraordinary relief. It's a very specific process and not all lawyers necessarily are going to understand the different nuts and bolts of that process.
So, you need to know what it is that you need going to into the consultation and then once you say that, ask them, "Okay. How do we get there?" And then, let the lawyer explain to you in a way that makes sense to you exactly how that process works.
If their answer is, "We got to wait till trial," or, if their answer is, "Well, we got to go to mediation," well, I mean, listen, that's true sometimes. I mean, if you want exclusive use and possession of your home just because you and your spouse don't really like each other and you're not getting along, we can write an affidavit all we want to. That's not going to be enough for a judge to kick somebody out and we will have to wait until mediation to resolve that issue. But, when we're talking about family violence or we're talking about alcohol abuse or some of those different things, I mean, there is a process which is accelerated and different than, "Let's go to mediation and then have a temporary orders hearing by which we can do that," but your lawyer has got to know that process.
Alex Hunt:
Yeah. Absolutely. And, I think sometimes you can learn a lot by explaining your situation and, if it is a more complex area of law that say your lawyer doesn't know the answer to, it's that they're going to tell you, "I don't know the answer to that. Let's wait and let me find the answer," instead of just riffing and making it up. That's the thing they don't tell you about law school, is that you're not necessarily learning every intricacy of the law. You're learning how to find the answer of the question.
David Adams:
Sure.
Alex Hunt:
And, as lawyers with a number of years of experience, we do this day in and day out, we know a lot of the answers to the questions. We know how to paint the picture for the judge. We know litigation strategy but, quite often, especially in family law, which is so unique and we see things that every day that you say, "Well, I've never seen that before," there are a number of times where you need to take a step back and say, "I don't know the answer to that, but I know where to find the answer."
Instead of making something up or hedging, I'm just going to tell you the truth, "Let me figure that out and I'll get that back to you." If your lawyer does that, I wouldn't look at that as a bad thing like, "Well, they don't know what they're talking about. They don't know the nuts and the bolts." I would take that as a good thing that they're not going to BS you.
David Adams:
Absolutely. That is something that I have done and will do. If I'm in a consultation especially and a client poses a unique situation or a unique question to me and I'm not exactly sure what the answer is, I'll tell them, "Listen, I'm going to research that or maybe talk with some colleagues of mine. I might look into some case law but I'm going to figure that out and I'm going to get back to you and I'm going to let you know." I think that's particularly important to me because I don't want to lose credibility with my clients.
What I don't want to do is BS a client like you just said and end up in a courtroom and end up on the wrong end of that and then come to find out I didn't know what I was talking about and now the client knows it too and I probably spent a lot of money and a lot of their resources for them to find out that I'm a fool. And, I'd rather go back to them later and say, "Listen, I did what I need to do. Here's the truth," or, "Here's how I think that's going to play in court. What do you want us to do now?" At least in my experience, every client I've ever done that with, I feel like has always been satisfied with me taking that extra time to figure out the answer to that question or to that issue.
Alex Hunt:
You are a prospective new client and you're trying to figure out, "Does my lawyer know the nuts and bolts of family law," what are some of the things that you would be looking for? What are some of the questions that you would be asking?
David Adams:
I think some of the biggest things would be, I think that you can tell a whole lot about a lawyer by doing one of the things that we already talked about, which is, is there anything that you need in the present, that you need done right now and how do you get there? And then, I think the second thing is, and even though lawyers may be very experienced at the family law process, I don't think all of them are as good about explaining that process, at least to potential new clients.
I think that after you pass the, "Is there anything that I need in the here and the now and how do we get there," I think you need to ask any lawyer that you're thinking about hiring, "How does the process work? What's the timeline on some of these different issues?" Now, we both know that cases can last for months, sometimes years, and there's often a lot of things that will come up in a litigation that you can't foresee but, if people ask you specific questions about stages in the process, you can definitely give them a good estimation about how long it normally would take if this or that or the other thing occurs.
I feel like, if your potential lawyer can't make you feel comfortable about, "Here's how I can get you what you need in the here and the now, and here's what the process should look like from front to back and here's approximately how long it should take, and here's how much in a ballpark some of these different things should cost," that's probably not the right lawyer for you.
Alex Hunt:
Okay. So, the next set of questions that you should ask should probably be about resources and what resources does this lawyer have? There are plenty of lawyers out there that are solo attorneys and they're excellent attorneys but there comes a point when you are just one person in one office and you're in trial and you've got a number of other clients, is that you just don't have the resources in order to meet the needs of all of your clients. And, it's one of the reasons that, at our firm, we have built a team of 10 attorneys, we've got a number of support staff that are backing up those attorneys.
A team is important but just the resources that are surrounding each of those attorneys and support staff and, when I talk about resources, I don't just mean people, which are important, with a variety of different experiences inside and outside the courtroom, people that you can go to as an attorney, you can go to your colleagues within the firm and say, "Have you been in front of this judge before? Have you addressed this issue?" Or, "I have this problem in one of my cases. How would you attack this? What would you file?" The colleague might even come and say, "I actually had that exact same issue and I already wrote a brief on it." And then, as an attorney, you can take that and without having to bill that client for writing a brand new brief and doing all the investigative work, you can repurpose that, save the client some money and you have an idea of what that judge is already going to do.
Having a team of people is really important but I also mean the physical resources and meaning, our firm really places a premium on technology. We've got access to the latest form books, the latest research technology with Westlaw and LexisNexis. If there is somebody that we need to do a background check, we can do that within five minutes. If you don't know where your significant other your spouse lives, we can usually track them down and we can figure that out.
But also, resources, meaning vendors. You'll have a case that will come in that'll be a very complex property case. We have a cadre of certified divorce financial analysts that we can call upon that can contract with our folks and they can provide complex financial advice and they can collaborate with us and they have experience doing so and doing well. They can also testify in court. We have a cadre of forensic accountants and forensic analysts that can go through bank statements and they can value businesses and these are people that we have a relationship with and we can trust. And, we've got certified divorce real estate experts that know how to sell a house and they know how to work with people. So, it's not only the people in the firm, it's the people outside the firm, it's the full resources that are available to a law firm.
David Adams:
Absolutely. And, it absolutely makes a difference. I can tell when I have a lawyer on the other side who's clearly has a lot less resources than we do and it makes a difference. You can usually see it in the legal paperwork that they file with the court. And, if you go the distance and it comes to a trial or a contested hearing, you can always see it come out in the courtroom when they have less resources. And, to your point, I mean these maybe often are perfectly competent lawyers but, you and I both know you can be as competent as you want to be, but it's not enough just to be competent to necessarily know the family code and to understand how family law process works. There are so many other things, which is the reason why we have and spend the money and invest the time to have those kinds of resources at our firm because they make a difference.
Alex Hunt:
Sure. And, if you could hire a certified divorce financial analyst or a forensic accountant to do the work for a fraction of the cost that we would be doing but they have an expertise in it, you want to have that person doing the work because we're not mathematicians, we're not financial analysts. In fact, many folks in our firm would probably say, "I went to law school because I am not a math person."
David Adams:
That's right.
Alex Hunt:
But, we know where to find the people and we have relationships with them and we have a track record where they've done a good job for us and it's finding a firm that has those relationships. So, in terms of phrasing, what kind of questions would you ask? Just generally ask what resources are available to the firm both inside and outside and tailor it to your particular case. If you've got a business, you want to start asking questions about business valuation. If you have a complex financial estate, you want to start asking questions about having a certified financial planner, certified divorce financial analysts on board your case because they're going to be able to provide you with the tax advice and the financial advice that your lawyer can't or shouldn't be providing to you. Tailor your questions to your particular case and ask if your lawyer that you're looking at has those resources available to them.
David Adams:
Absolutely.
Alex Hunt:
And then, the last set of questions that you should ask your potential lawyer in an initial consultation would be about communication. And, I know for your clients, you're one of the most accessible lawyers, you're available to your clients if you need them. What kind of questions should folks be asking their prospective lawyer about communication?
David Adams:
I definitely think that you want to ask your potential lawyer, "How long is it going to take? If I reach out to you, if I have an issue, when can I expect a response?" At our firm, we try to be very rigid for good reason about having a 24-hour response rule. And, usually it doesn't even take 24 hours for us to respond. It's usually more like 12, that business day, next business day. But, I have a lot of clients who are firing or looking for a new lawyer, firing a former lawyer and, oftentimes one of the biggest reasons why they're doing that is because they just don't feel like they matter because they can't get a hold of their attorney.
And, in some cases, in some situations, it's that they can't get a hold of the attorney. They can get a hold of everyone else at the law firm, the paralegal, the support staff, whatever it might be, but they can't seem to get the answers that they need out of the lawyer themselves and they just feel like their case doesn't matter.
And so, I definitely think that it's important, when you're in that consultation to ask them, "How long will it be before you respond if I have an issue?" And, I think secondarily, maybe just to ask them, "How important do you think it is, the lawyer, to timely communicate with clients."
Now, I have potential clients that come into my office who will say, "I met with another lawyer and now I'm meeting with you and I asked them that same question and they laughed, essentially as if, 'It's as important as I want to make it and I'll get to you when I get to you.'" And, that just seems absurd and ridiculous to me, not only just because not very good business but, these are people, these are their families, these are their lives. It's a very important to them. And, especially early on in the process, people are scared, people are nervous, people are anxious and so they need that reassurance. And, I think it's very important, when you sit down in that consultation, to ask them those two questions and see what they have to say about them.
Alex Hunt:
Very good. Thank you very much for joining me. David is the lead attorney at our League City office at Hunt Law Firm. If you'd like more information on our firm, you can visit familylawyerkaty.com. If you are watching us on YouTube, please like the video. Please subscribe to the channel so you'll get future podcasts. We also have a number of other videos on the website that you can see. And, if you're listening to this on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or another podcast method, please subscribe. You'll get these delivered right to you every week. And, if you need to find us by phone, you can call us at (832) 315 5494. See you next time.