A Few Words on Solo/Single Lawyer Small Law Offices

There are law offices throughout your area most likely that operate either as a one lawyer man/woman show, or possibly have a legal assistant that assists the one lawyer. They can at times offer to handle your case for a lower price sometimes than what you have been hearing from other law firms or law offices. This type of setup demands a few comments worthy of your consideration as you are choosing between your options for a pending divorce case.

First, with this setup you need to understand and be prepared for your case to move at the speed and time frame of your lawyer. Whether they have a lot of work or a little amount of work and what that work is demanding of them.  They most likely have many other cases and their own life to live and your case can only fit in so much of that time with everything else. If there is no legal assistant then don’t be surprised to not have phone calls answered every time as the lawyer is in court, on vacation, or not feeling well. Also any other communication may take a few days at times to be received and responded back to you. They could be a fine lawyer, but communication takes availability and time and a lawyer working on their own is limited in both.

If they have a legal assistant, it will be better of course depending on the skill of the legal assistant. The legal assistant will mostly take down messages and maybe know some things about your case depending on how busy they are. It all comes down to if your lawyer or legal assistant in this setup is in Court, on vacation, or sick; then your case is in someone else’s Courtroom, on vacation, or sick. I don’t want the take away for you to be that you should not consider hiring a lawyer that has no staff or very limited staff to help, but again only to be informed and make sure that is the best setup for your case. Mitchell & Crunk started out with one lawyer working by himself with no staff and still produced quality legal work for clients, but certain cases are not the right fit, or even certain clients get frustrated by lack of communication and slow moving pieces in their case. If that is you or your kind of case, then these are some points to consider.

Finally, it may be worthwhile to get to know the lawyer before you hire them. Do they work alone or with very limited staff because they are young or new then that is understandable and again could still be a very fine lawyer to work with depending on your case and your needs. Are they older or more experienced but because of family or lifestyle choices have chosen to work alone or with limited staff, then again they may still be a fine and qualified lawyer to work with depending on your case and your needs. Conversely, if they seem disorganized, poor communication skills, or handle any kind of case that walks in their door, then those are flags to investigate further to know if this lawyer is the right fit for your case and your needs.

It comes down to similar points as with any major purchase, hire, or decision; it takes proper planning and research to make the best decision that will make the most sense for your kind of case and the types of qualities that are important to you as a person.  For this reason we at Mitchell & Crunk believe in offering and plan to continue to offer a free initial 20 min. consult.  It is important to us for anyone who is in need of a family lawyer to have a no cost option to get to know us first and make sure it is a right fit for both the potential new client or our firm.