Seminar Adventure I
I am putting together a seminar to address people's concerns and questions about divorce, child custody, and child support in Chicago next month. It should be interesting. I hope to be able to provide some perspective and explain the overall process. I think that as family law attorneys, we forget that most people don't really know what the process is, and what they think they know is simply wrong. A friend mentioned that it seemed strange to offer a seminar to educate people about family law for free. After all, with enough information, one can go to the courthouse and take care of everything themselves. I gave his three rebuttals: First, I have found that the more I share information with people, the more they come to trust me and the more business comes my way. Many people do not feel like trusting their life's savings and children's future to self help forms, and a 'gut feel' earned through Law & Order reruns. Second, I have found that it is often cheaper and quicker to bring an attorney in from the beginning. I have worked with people who started their divorce themselves, realized they were in over their head, handed their case to me and I had to clean it up. Cleaning can be costly, and almost always involves 'restarting the case', since few non-attorney's actually show up to the many status checks required by the court, and allow their divorce to be dismissed. Third, so what? If people have a simple divorce, with no children or property and agree to everything, they probably don't need an attorney. For those people, I suggest trying it yourself with perhaps an attorney reviewing the decree (thats the final and important court document that lays out everyone's post divorce responsibilities). I will see.
