Sooner or later you will need the services of a lawyer and/or may be involved with a lawsuit. When that happens you need to understand more about the legal process, types of lawyers and legal jurisdiction to ensure that you obtain the best legal representation available. There are many different types of lawyers just like there are many different types of doctors. Legal matters can be serious and having the right type of lawyer can greatly influence the results that you obtain.

Some lawyers are general practitioners, and can handle routine and non-specialized legal matters. Other lawyers are more specialized and may work in only one or a handful of areas. A specialist has a deeper level of knowledge of the legal statues and case law within their area of specialty. You will usually pay a higher per hour fee to a specialized lawyer, but their expertise will often increase their efficiency and effectiveness. Whether you need a specialist will depend upon you facts and circumstances.

Legal Jurisdiction

In order to practice law, a lawyer needs to pass the bar exam and meet other state licensing requirements. Most lawyers are licensed to practice law in 1 or 2 states. This means that you will need to find a lawyer that is licensed in the state that has jurisdiction over you legal issue. This may or may not be an issue depending upon the law firm that you normally use. Small lawyers are usually licensed in 1 or 2 states. Larger law firms, who have partners licensed in multiple states or nationally may be able to practice law in any state. This is one advantage of using a large law firm. They usually have different departments specializing in different areas of law and have jurisdiction in more states. This means that one law firm can manage all of your legal issues.

Laws and legal rights are determined by the legal rules and regulations as well prior state legal cases. Since the rules and case history varies from state to state, your legal rights can vary significantly depending upon which state has jurisdiction. State licensing requirements ensure that you obtain proper legal counsel based upon the laws of that particular state. A lawyer licensed in New Jersey, may be very effective in his state but completely ineffective to represent you under California law. Legal jurisdiction rules are designed to safe-guard the interests of the consumer and also increase efficiency in the court system.

Types of Law

You only need to look at the yellow page ads to realize that there are numerous types of lawyers and areas of law. In non-routine legal matters, you will want to use a specialized lawyer to ensure that you obtain the highest quality of legal advice. Below are some common types of specialized lawyers:

1) mesothelioma lawyers;
2) divorce lawyers;
3) motor vehicle accident lawyers;
4) immigration lawyers;
5) family lawyers;
6) accident and personal injury lawyers;
7) asbestos lawyers;
8) business and corporate lawyers;
9) bankruptcy lawyers; and
10) employment lawyers.

Upon reviewing the list, it’s obvious that these areas of law are all very different. Divorce law and immigration law are two completely different fields and knowledge of one area will be useless to the other. If you were getting a divorce you would not want an immigration lawyer to represent you. Before hiring any attorney, make sure you know their areas of speciality and their background. Unfortunately, some general lawyers may not admit that they are not the best person to represent your interests in a particular matter.

Types-of-Lawyers.com is dedicated to providing you with the relevant information you need to ensure that you obtain proper legal representation. Before using an attorney you need to learn what questions to ask and which credentials to look for. Lawsuits and legal matters can be overwhelming, finding the right lawyer should not be.

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In the emerging field of collaborative law, there is an approach known as the Multi-Disciplinary Model. In essence, this model provides for a collaborative divorce team consisting of two lawyers, two divorce coaches, a child specialist and a financial advisor to assist the couple. Many people may scoff at this idea, especially since one of the goals of collaborative law is to reduce the amount of cost associated with divorce. But a closer look at the multi disciplinary approach helps explain why this team of six can be more cost effective than the traditional method of divorce.

The first thing to keep in mind is that divorce affects couples on many levels. There are financial, legal and emotional considerations and then there are issues involving children. In simple terms, a divorce is a multi task assignment. These tasks include not only reaching a legal division, but also the development of age-appropriate parenting plans, learning communication skills that will move spouses successfully along the road of co-parenting, moving away from the blame/shame cycle. The financial portion of a divorce can be complicated by uncertainty about the future, tax considerations, and different methods of structuring a financial settlement.

In the traditional model, lawyers are called upon to handle all of these tasks, which is impossible considering that lawyers are neither accountants, therapists or child specialists. As a result, the divorce becomes final but many issues often go unresolved. In a collaborative divorce, there are neither dueling lawyers nor dueling experts. The Collaborative Divorce model instead uses a collaborative team who provides containment for the couple as they go through the divorce transition. Within this model, clients are informed of their process choices, which includes the involvement of different professionals such as lawyers, mental health professionals who act as divorce coaches, mental health professionals who act as neutral child specialists, and neutral financial specialists.

Clients may choose to involve lawyers, coaches, a child specialist and a financial adviser from the beginning. It is more common for parties to build their team as they proceed through the process, depending upon their needs. For instance, spouses may choose to engage coaches only after hitting “speed bumps” in their work with lawyers.

The divorce team communicates in team meetings about the parties and the issues they are working through. Clients sign agreements with their lawyers, with any divorce coaches they retain, with the child specialist and financial specialist (if retained) that confirm no one will subpoena any professionals if the case goes out of the collaborative process. The contracts also allow the professionals to communicate freely amongst themselves to further understanding of the clients’ needs.

Clients often question the cost of this process. Cost is a huge factor for most couples as they divorce. In a traditional divorce, litigants’ often have little or no over legal bills once the litigation template becomes the engine of their divorce. Litigants are completely unable to control the time their lawyers spend waiting in court to be heard, the volume and length of correspondence exchanged between counsel, or the extensive Pretrial discovery, required by the Court, but often not particularly needed by the clients.

It makes not only good practical sense but also good fiscal sense to allow clients to retain professionals that will be used only as much as the client requires them, and whose specific skills are geared to the clients’ needs. On an hourly basis, therapists and counsellors are less expensive than lawyers, and more skilled in dealing with conflict. Even in high conflict families, both the inter-disciplinary groups and the Collaborative Divorce teams are finding that couples spend less on divorce coaches than litigants in the same community are spending on psychologists for custody and access assessments. The outcome for couples using divorce coaches is a de-escalation of the conflict, as opposed to custody and access assessments which provide the spouses with no new skills and are often more divisive for the family.

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Most people hate lawyers and that is truly unfortunate for the legal profession, although many people say it is their own fault. One type of area of law, which is practiced that often gets people to hate lawyers are those that practiced divorce law.

Since 65% of those who have been married have had at least one divorce, most of them had used a lawyer to get the divorce, so you can understand that half or more of them will be very upset with the deal they got and all will be upset at the amount of money they had to pay the divorce lawyer to represent them.

So what can divorce lawyers do to promote them selves and maintain good public relations? It might be wise for divorce lawyers to get with marriage counselors and put on seminars and try to get people to stay together and work on things amicably.

If the marriage does not work out the divorce lawyers might get some extra business, but perhaps they might also have checklists and meet with both parties together and help them separate without wasting all their money on divorce lawyers.

Why would a divorce lawyer want to do that, because they can make money without destroying people’s lives and making people hate lawyers? Perhaps if you are a divorce lawyer you might consider all this in 2006.

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