All right.
We're gonna go through what I consider to be the 10 signs that you may
possibly have hired the wrong attorney.
Now, first and foremost, let me just tell you, this is not legal advice.
Don't watch this and be like, oh, I'm, running, I'm firing my attorney tomorrow.
Whoa.
Stop real quick.
Okay.
Hiring the wrong attorney can cost you money, time, peace of mind,
and sometimes your whole strategy.
but I'm not here to tell you.
I just want you to think about your attorney, your relationship, what's
happening, and just use some of these as maybe examples to ask your circle of
people, am I making the right choice?
So a lot of people stay with the wrong attorney way too long.
Way, way, way too long because they feel stuck or this taboo thing where
they think that they've been told that it looks bad to change attorneys.
I don't know about you, but I don't know if looking bad is higher on my
list than keeping my own kids or having the schedule that I want, or having
the parenting plan that I want, or getting half of the assets, keeping
the home, uh, keeping my retirement.
So if my attorney is not giving me that energy, that they're gonna
go get those things, how it looks to a judge or my ex or co-counsel,
I could give two fucks about.
Okay, so you're not gonna hear me ever say, oh, keep an attorney
because I don't want it to look bad.
This is the girl that changed obs, eight months pregnant.
So you are not gonna hear me say stay because of appearance.
All right?
So let's break these down.
We're gonna run through these pretty quickly.
I don't wanna keep you too long.
I know you're busy being a single parent, struggling through
a divorce, but here we go.
Number one, they don't respond to you.
Now you're hired this person and you paid them an ass load of money.
And they don't call you back.
They don't.
return phone calls.
What emails go unanswered, like days and weeks go by.
Communication is literally one of the critical, most important things for
this relationship to work between client and attorney, because we don't have
regular weekly meet and appointments, but we do have email and phone calls.
Which by the way, I would never just leave a voicemail.
I would always follow up on email and say, Hey, you know, it is, uh, four 18
at one 20 in the afternoon, central time.
I just left you a voicemail regarding these three things.
I would like a phone call back by the end of business day, Friday
at the latest on next steps.
Boom.
but not calling you back, but again, this is something I asked in the interview
process of what is the response time?
What is their communication point of preference?
Do you have their text, do you have email?
Do you like, how do they communicate?
Number two.
They don't seem prepared at hearings, and I thought this one was like
a once in a while type of case.
It's not.
I have so many clients who call me after their status hearing or after a motion or
a contempt hearing, and they're like, Sam, it's like, they didn't even know my name.
It's like they were, I had one client who got represented.
By their attorney and their attorney thought they were somebody else
and represented a whole case.
That wasn't even my client's case.
And at the end of it, she was like, what the fuck was that?
And he was like, well, I don't know.
You know Lindsay?
And she was like, Lindsay, I'm fucking Rebecca.
What are you talking about, Lindsey?
And he was like, mortified.
And he had got the files like switched.
What the fuck?
It's kinda like that guy that just took off the wrong organ.
Like, Hey, let's do a little pregame here and talk about left
side or right side of the body.
Which one are we starting on?
Hey, let's talk about Lindsay or Rebecca.
Which one do we have going on here?
We have to make sure, and I know attorneys are busy.
I get it.
We all are though.
We're all busy.
But you not doing what you said you were gonna do in a hearing and flipping and
not, doing the strategy that we said.
What the heck?
Attorneys should know your case before you walk into the courtroom.
So if you are not meeting at your attorney's office or in a room in the
courthouse before your hearing, I don't care if it's a small little status
hearing, I don't care if it's a little, small, little motion or a small little.
Don't make them think that it's a small thing.
I'll just meet you there and we'll walk right in together.
Uhuh, uh uh.
You go back out to that little, small little room right outside the courtroom
and you make them open the file, you make sure they have the right file.
You ask them what again are, did we determine what again, did we agree to?
What again are you going to push for me?
What again are you gonna strategize for?
Don't let them act like small little hearings are just something that
they can walk into and handle, right?
So you make sure, but if they're walking in and not prepared.
Adios because how they prepare for the small hearings is how they're
gonna prepare for the big ones.
All right, number three.
They push generic parenting plan templates, and this one is why
attorneys hate my guts is because I'm saying make a custom parenting plan.
Make a detailed parenting plan, make a detailed parenting plan
that ages up with your children.
And again, you guys, I wouldn't have a business if this didn't work.
People are using them, people are getting them approved by judges,
attorney's offices are using them.
I'm giving attorneys permission to use my plan.
This is a thing, but the attorney that just wants to push the template with no
customization, no strategy is a Larry, the lawyer that wants you to come back
and give them money forever, sorry.
It is what it is.
The templates are gonna create problems down the road and Larry knows
that, and he wants you to buy into it so that you keep his lights on.
That's what that is.
So any attorney that's pushing those generic things and saying,
oh, it is just a template.
every couple uses it.
The couple before you with the same two kids.
No, it's not the same two kids.
It's not 'cause my kid has a DHD and the other kid has, uh, medical condition.
So unless those two kids had the exact same thing, this is
not the same parenting plan.
So why am I using a template that that family used on my family?
It's not the same.
Number four, they don't explain their strategy.
They say things like, trust me.
I've had a case like this before.
Have you the exact same case?
Oh, you've divorced somebody that has a, personality disorder.
You've divorced somebody that's a single parent, you've divorced
somebody that has three children, two of which were from a donor egg.
Like there's so much difference in each case.
Don't let somebody say, oh, I've had a case just like this,
the exact same case, Larry.
I doubt it, but when they don't explain their strategy to you.
Why this is your future that they're bargaining on, that they're talking
for, that they're negotiating.
You need to know what the risks are.
You need to know what decisions they're leading with.
Are they gonna try to get you sole decision making or are
they walking in with joint?
Why do you not know that they can't keep stuff from you?
This is your case.
Your name is the name at the end of the day, here's the thing
that nobody really talks about.
You are the one signing.
You are the one signing the judge's orders.
Not your attorney, their signatures nowhere on this guys, but they act
like they are the end all, be all.
And what they say goes, no, my ass is the one that'll be in trouble in the future.
My ass is the one that has to follow this plan.
My ass is the one that has to pay that money, not your ass.
So how about I understand everything, but a lot of
attorneys don't wanna talk to you.
They don't wanna dumb it down or they don't wanna waste the time.
Hence why my job is important to educate you.
All right, number five.
They're always rushing you.
Well, I have a meeting to get to, well, I have court to get to.
Uh, hey, I only got like five minutes to talk to you.
That's an attorney that's in it for the wrong reason.
And maybe you are taking on too many clients and maybe
you are that fucking busy.
That probably shouldn't have been the office that I picked because I
wanted to have my handheld, I wanted to have some care and some attention,
and I wanna have some patients.
So any attorney that's rushing you around and makes you feel like you're
not important or dismissing you or just putting you awful lot or like, hurry up
rush, dude, my anxiety can't handle that.
if I'm just a number to you, why did I hire you?
So really be thinking about if that feeling of somebody not having
time for you, is that who you want?
Representing you, somebody that just rushes you through things.
Number six, they encourage unnecessary conflict.
Mm Oh, we'll file for that.
Oh, yeah.
We'll, put that together.
Oh, yeah, I, I'm gonna put a cover letter on that.
And then they just cause all kinds of conflict.
I hope your attorney's, not of that attorney, but I guarantee the high
conflict attorney hired somebody that's like that where their cover letters, which
this is a little bit of t you guys should know, cover letters are only between
attorneys, and I call them the soap opera.
They are a soap opera episode in word form.
That's all that is, is them trying to rattle you when
you read that cover letter.
So perfect example.
If I have a concern about the children not wearing their seatbelt and being
seen in the front seat of a pickup truck, and I send that over to my
ex's attorney, my lawyer's gonna write a cover letter on that, that could
say something like, Hey, mother is concerned about the children's safety.
Riding in the front seat of a pickup truck under the age of this, and
they didn't have seat belts on.
know, please tell your client to do better.
We're attaching a modification to the parenting plan that requires
the children to be in safety seats, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Anyways, that would be what my attorney would say, a high conflict attorney.
Who's being aggressive would say something like, to the extreme of
your client is gonna go to jail.
If they continue to have the children ride in the front seat, if we catch them
again without a seatbelt on, they're gonna be pulled over immediately, have custody
taken away, have visitation taken away.
They will never have holidays again, like a huge threatening letter to where when
you read that, you're like, oh my gosh.
We were literally moving a couch from the neighbor's house to this house, and
it was only like a half a block, but.
Holy shit.
Like it just escalates things.
So when your attorney's making these big, over the top exaggerating letters
or everything is a conflict, and saying, well, I'll file a motion for that.
I'll do that.
Unnecessary court battles that they're not even trying.
To work with the other side and talk it out or compromise.
Um, I had an example where a client had a vacation planned across
seas, passports were involved, huge tickets, multiple flights, all that.
And instead of talking it out with the attorneys, just filed, a motion
with the court costing her so much more money, where the other side
just wanted a simple itinerary.
And so now we filed court fees, we have attorney fees and all this
stuff when the other side just wanted an itinerary of flights.
And so it could have been worked out between attorneys, but her
attorney wanted to spend more money.
So these are just some examples for you to get your brain thinking about
is your attorney the right fit for you?
Number seven, they just don't listen to you.
You know your kids, your schedule and your co-parent and you want the
specific, you portion of the parenting plan written this way, and they're
just like, Nope, we don't do that.
A judge won't say yes to that.
We're not doing that.
And my counter to that, always you guys, is what's been going into
parenting plans isn't working.
Can we just call a spade a spade?
The templates that they've used for years aren't working.
The ones that judges pass down aren't working.
Otherwise.
Why are modifications on the rise?
Why are people getting hurt?
Why are kids being taken out of homes?
These parenting plans suck.
So when your attorney doesn't listen to you about a stipulation that you want,
remember they don't know your kids.
They don't know your ex, they don't know your situation.
They're just trying to pass you through as fast as they can and take
as much money outta the situation.
So if you're not being heard and listened to by somebody that you're
not paying $5 to, but $5,000 to, why are you working with this person?
Nowhere else.
If you went to a dentist office and you gave them $5,000 to do some severe
dental work and all they did was polish your teeth and call it a cleaning,
would you still be giving them $5,000 next month to do the same protocol?
No.
You would jump ship and go to a different dentist's office.
Why?
With attorneys, when somebody doesn't listen to what we want, do we stay?
I don't know.
It kind of sounds like our fucking trauma bond with our ex, doesn't it?
We stayed beyond the time that we should have, and here we are not
completely out of our trauma bond.
Guess who knows that our attorneys and they still abuse us with these threats
or that they know better or this or that.
And I'm not saying they don't know better about some things
when it comes to the law.
But emotional bell, we being and psychological warfare, they know
nothing about because that's not what their certificate is in.
That's not what their degree is in.
So don't let them tell you that they do because they don't, they've experienced
it, they've witnessed it, they've heard people, go through it, but they have
not been trained on how to do that.
So when they tell you, oh, that's not important.
Oh, that, I'm sorry.
Are you gonna be living my life with me post divorced?
Are you signing this parenting plan?
Oh, by the way, if you fuck this up now for me.
Are you representing me free later?
No.
No, they're not.
So why am I letting them make me feel that way?
Now again, this whole podcast isn't about jump ship, you
know, and leave your attorney.
You never leave an attorney without another attorney already in backup.
Right, so I'm not firing my dentist till I already have a new dentist.
You know, I'm not selling my car till I already have a car, right?
I mean, we have to have a plan for next steps.
We can't go without a car.
We can't go without a dentist.
Like we can't go without a lawyer.
The same thing is true here.
Now, number eight, they're uncomfortable with you being
prepared, and we did a whole episode about this, but man, attorneys that
don't like it when you have notes.
Or you have questions, or God forbid you bring a parenting plan already
written to them and they don't like it.
Ooh, they get their panties in a bunch 'cause their ego
just got hurt or their wallet.
I'm not sure which, but it's one if not both.
Now we have had tons of attorneys inside the next chapter.
I'm gonna start having attorneys on my podcast.
I have been on, I can't even tell you how many podcasts of attorneys.
Who know my parenting plan, who have seen my parenting plan, who love my
parenting plan, and who use my parenting plan in all the states because they
see that I have fixed a problem.
They see that I have put details into protect their client.
They see that my parenting plan is measurable.
They see that my parenting plan can be seen by a judge and go,
oh, well here's what it said.
What did they do?
Well, that's not even close to what this says.
They're in failure.
They're in contempt.
Here's their fine.
Versus when a parenting plan is written really vague, well, it
leaves the door wide open for attorneys to be involved forever.
So that might be why your attorney's uncomfortable with you being prepared.
Now, I know what every attorney listening this is gonna say.
That's not it, Sam, that's you giving them false hope.
That's what we're worried about.
We're worried that you're overed educating them the wrong direction.
We're worried that you're educating them and it's wrong for their case.
We're worried that you're giving them ideas that they can't have in their case.
I'm here to tell you attorneys, not what I'm doing and everything that I
teach and everything that I have for sale is all about working for them,
for their future and their children and their post-divorce journey.
As a single parent, it's all about putting it all on the table and picking off what
they think they need and what they want, and then it's your job to go get it.
But a parent should have the right to know everything's on the table.
Everything is on the table.
Until it doesn't fit their case.
So a lot of parents come to me and they say, well, I wish I would've known that.
I didn't even know that was an option.
Do you know how much that hurts to know that?
That no one told them that was an option?
It was an option to have times wrote into their holiday schedule.
It's an option to go into detail about what financial decisions need to be
made for extracurriculars, or it's an option to know who gets to take
their child to the dentist every year.
If that was an option you could have put in.
Yeah, it is an option you could put in.
Yep.
But some attorneys don't want you to have that option wrote in there
because they want you to have to call them every time there's a problem
or something that was left out.
Think about it.
It is a business, a billion dollar business every year.
Number nine, billing gets outta control.
I know people that have put a retainer, myself included, $10,000 and within
three months it was gone and I'm like, whoa, nothing has happened In our case.
Where did that money go?
There's been no determination.
There's been no court date.
There's been nothing where the fuck did $10,000 go?
So unexplained charges, constant billing, surprised, no clarity on timing of where
that came from and how that was spent.
So when legal costs get out of control, number one, you should
be asking for an itemized bill.
Number two, you should be keeping track of every single thing that
happens in your case with your attorney so that you can cross-reference it
with your line item bill that you should be getting from your attorney.
And I'm gonna tell you, there is a lot of times stuff gets put on
your bill that wasn't your bill.
Remember Rebecca and Lindsay, their bills can be mixed up real easily when Larry
just goes, Hey, uh, Rebecca called, I talked to her for 45 minutes, put that
on her bill when really it was Lindsay.
Now Rebecca has Lindsay's bill.
That shit happens all the time.
And so please make sure you're looking at your bills accordingly.
And if your office hear me when I say this, if your attorney's office is
a one man show, I'll be paying extra hard attention to that bill because
that attorney's trying to save costs by being their secretary, their own
paralegal, their own lawyer, and their own billing, and their own HR department.
They're trying to do all the jobs of an office that does have those five
positions filled by five different humans.
And so be very careful about cutting corners in a one man show office, that
they're the ones answering the phones, writing the motions, doing the court
dates, but also doing billing, and they're the only person you can call.
There's no HR department.
You've been warned, number 10.
You constantly just feel uneasy around them.
Now again, I am all for picking the attorneys, the living shit
out of your ex. But they shouldn't intimidate the shit outta you.
And now I'm not saying you be friends with your attorney.
10 outta 10.
Don't recommend.
We're not friends.
This is a business transaction.
I'm not friends with my dentist, nor my friends with my pediatrician
for my kids, nor my friends with most of the people that I engage
with on a professional level.
Shout out to my chiropractor, though we are besties, but when it
comes to lawyer, we're not friends.
I should feel comfortable enough to call you because we
worked out how we communicate.
I should feel comfortable enough to ask you for a line item bill, because I have
a question about my bill, and you're not gonna, yell at me or cuss at me because
I asked for a line item bill, and you're gonna get it to me pretty efficiently.
I feel pretty comfortable with working with your office, just like when I
called the dentist and said, Hey, I see a charge on here I'm not familiar with.
Can you have the hygienist call me back and explain this one to me?
Sure, no problem.
She'll call you before the business day's over.
No problem.
It's the truth.
Something happened and I got billed for it.
So it's easy to explain when it's the truth.
When people get mad, when you ask questions.
I would have to ask why.
Why does your attorney get mad when you call?
Why does your attorney get mad when you ask questions?
Why does your attorney get mad when you wanna itemize?
Bill?
Why does your attorney get mad when you are just being a person going
through a divorce and you're emotional?
If somebody's making you feel like you're wrong for feeling your feelings
or having questions or having doubts or wanting a certain thing that may
not be the right attorney for you.
Now again, all this to say, none of this was legal advice for you to like fire
your attorney today, Larry, you're gone.
Adios.
But there are lawyers out there that won't do these things now, won't do all 10.
I can't promise you that, but how many of you have an
attorney that did all 10 things?
That's not a good attorney.
Now again, anybody can go get a law degree and pass.
It doesn't make them a well-qualified attorney.
It doesn't make them somebody that needs to represent my future.
It doesn't mean that's the somebody that needs to represent my case.
I wanna find somebody that can fit better with me and what I need.