We get it. Choosing the right person to help you through this process is a big decision. You should have a chance to meet the person you will be working with — before making a significant financial commitment, or perhaps you just want an opportunity to explore your personal situation.
We offer three different types of initial consultations – depending on your needs. If you are not sure what is best for you, we always suggest booking a 10 minute phone conversation to narrow down the options (click *here*).
- Initial Couples Consultation – We offer a 30 minute no cost consultation with you and your spouse. In the first 30 minutes we will describe a general overview of the options for you and the law behind them. We will also show how our mediation process is designed to help you and your spouse to an agreement with minimal time, cost, and conflict — and to have the least impact on the children. If you decide to work with us, we block off the following 30 minutes so that we can get started right away. There are a few initial decisions that you can make that greatly reduce the amount of time necessary to gather your financial documents, to reduce conflict, to have some greater clarity about your short term financial issues, a chance to agree to interim parenting time with children, and the like.
- Initial Individual Consultation – Individual meetings discuss general information about separation and/or divorce. Additionally, we can do a quick and dirty division of assets, calculation of child support, show spousal support advisory guidelines based on specialized software, and an overview of issues in parenting – all based on the information you provide. For people researching, wondering how things work, or who are interested in negotiating themselves – this can save you many hours and many thousands of dollars. Our normal rate of $290 applies and payment is collected at the end of the meeting – there is no obligation to continue.
- Initial Individual Legal Consultation – Choose this option if you are looking to retain a lawyer. This is a 30 minute free consultation. There is no obligation.
- If you decide after the first 30 minutes that you want us to act as your lawyer, we can spend the following 30 minutes collecting information necessary to start the process. This is billable time to be paid for at the end of the meeting.
- Additionally, as lawyers, it is normal that we ask for a prepaid deposit (often called a retainer) of $3,000 to cover additional work on your file. The final cost may be less or it may be more. To be clear, this is your money that is deposited into a trust account and we can only draw down on it as we work on your file. You may request the balance to be refunded to you at any time, no questions asked.
