The purpose of this section is to help you maximize the value of your initial consultation.

Your initial consultation with a divorce attorney is of critical importance. In fact, you may find that this meeting is the most significant time spent with a divorce attorney. The advice you receive will likely impact some of the most important decisions you will make. You should expect to obtain information about the divorce process, the law related to your specific issues and the application of the law to your facts. It is important for you to prepare for the consultation in a way that recognizes the importance of the conference and that maximizes its value to you. In the conference, you will receive the information you need to make wise and logical decisions about your case and your future. Our objective is to begin strategic planning and case resolution in the initial consultation.

Your initial consultation with an Orange County divorce attorney is of critical importance. In fact, you may find that this meeting is the most significant time that you spend with a divorce attorney. The advice you receive will likely impact some of the most important decisions you will ever make. You should expect to obtain information about the divorce process, the law related to your specific issues and the application of the law to your specific facts. It is important for you to prepare for the consultation in a way that recognizes the importance of the conference and that maximizes its value to you. In the conference, you will receive the information you need to make wise and logical decisions about your case and your future. Our objective is to begin strategic planning and case resolution in the initial consultation not many months later.

Doing the following tasks will greatly enhance the value and cost-effectiveness of the time spent with your Orange County divorce attorney:

1. Review the relevant pages in the Practice Areas section of our website. Educating yourself before your initial conference will make the consultation far more cost-effective & efficient and will likely help you ask us better and more targeted questions in the conference. Our website was designed to give you the opportunity to learn about basic family law issues on your time as opposed to paying us our hourly rates to explain the basics. Our objective is for you to only pay us for advice on the nuanced, targeted and/or complex areas of family law. Our website is designed to save you money. It contains significant and meaningful information that many lawyers charge for.
2. Prepare a written list of your questions, issues and concerns. This list should be viewed as a part of the agenda for our meeting. You may have preconceived specific ideas about the process and the law, please allow us to confirm your ideas and beliefs or to correct them.
3. Bring a previously prepared financial statement or prepare a simple, handwritten list of your assets and debts. The list should identify separate and community property. Assets include business interests, partnerships, investments, bank accounts, real estate, vehicles, collectibles, life insurance, club memberships, retirement plans, etc. Debts include mortgages, pledges, lines of credit, credit card debt, pending lawsuits, taxes due, contingent liabilities, student loans, etc. Regardless of whether you have a high net worth or a modest estate, rough estimates are sufficient for the initial conference.
4. Prepare a written bullet point outline or summary of facts that you believe we need to know. Topics might include your date of separation, child custody, domestic violence, separate property, etc. Topics may also include issues related to the formation, development and growth of a business. For our advice to be as accurate as possible and of maximum value to you, we need as much relevant information as possible. Carefully outlining the facts and/or providing us a timeline can be a significant time saver. A written summary makes it less likely that you will forget important details or that we will misunderstand one of your comments. The time spent communicating the information to your Orange County divorce lawyer will be a fraction of the time that would have been required to relate the facts to him/her orally.
5. If you have been served with any court pleadings filed with the Orange County family law court that contain statements that are incomplete or incorrect, prepare a very detailed statement explaining your version of the allegations, events or facts addressed in the pleadings, paragraph by paragraph and point by point. Your statement should address the issues in the same order as set forth in the pleadings and should be rich in facts, dates, places, witnesses, circumstances, etc. The statement should not be a simple denial. Provide us with very accurate details and bring all court pleadings with you.
6. Prepare a summary of your goals and objectives. What do you perceive as the real issues? What objectives do you want us to help you achieve? Do you or your spouse have a settlement proposal that we can help you analyze and evaluate?
7. Provide us with the last three years of tax returns if they are readily available.

By completing the tasks listed above, you will allow your Orange County divorce attorney to provide you with the best and most comprehensive advice and early-stage analysis possible. It is not necessary for you to email your thoughts to us before the consultation. We believe we can provide you with significantly more relevant, individualized and targeted advice if you prepare for our meeting. Your preparation will make the initial consultation far more cost-effective, informative and efficient. If you communicate the facts and your objectives at the conference in a complete and organized fashion, we can spend more time in the meeting analyzing, strategizing, and problem-solving your issues, concerns, and questions.

Your meeting with us will be more efficient and informative if less time is spent gathering facts and more time is spent explaining the law to you and discussing potential strategies and solutions. Spending time planning and preparing for your consultation will be time extremely well spent.

We seek to have a positive long-term relationship with you for many reasons, including the fact that one of our goals is for you to highly recommend us to your friends and colleagues for many years to come. We are aware of the fact that many issues determine a client’s level of satisfaction, including the results, the amount of the attorney’s fees, the time required to complete the divorce, client service, and many other issues. Your fees will be less if you are organized and efficient in planning our consultations, provide us with the requested documents at your earliest opportunity, communicate with us immediately if there are areas of concern, take reasonable positions on the issues, and keep us informed as to your thinking, or changes in your thinking, on the relevant issues. Please see How to Minimize and Manage Your Orange County Divorce Lawyer’s Fees and Speed the Process.

It is critical for you to tell us the absolute and complete truth about all relevant issues. Please volunteer all of the relevant information, even if we do not ask a specific and important question on the topic. We rely on what you tell us in developing a strategy and a game plan to resolve your matter. If we do not know all of the facts, we will not be able to analyze your matter accurately. We do charge for our time in the initial consultation; however, you will not be asked for a retainer in the initial consultation, as that is our policy not to allow clients to retain us in the initial consultation. 

Please take a moment and review these sections in our website:

• Contact with Our Firm
• How to Minimize and Manage Your Orange County Divorce Lawyer’s Fees and Speed the Process
• Selecting a Divorce Lawyer
• Practice Areas
• How Can I Prepare for My Initial Consultation?