Unbundled Services/Limited Representation – Low-Cost Divorce Attorney Berkeley
Unbundled legal services revolutionize the strategic balance between you and your divorce lawyer in an uncontested divorce. You regain the edge due to the fact that you manage the services offered and the costs charged– or at the very least, the facts of your case do.
And there ends up being a substantial distinction in what a lawyer can charge you when his/her scope is restricted. S/he no longer has endless obligation plus knowledge of just how much credit you have – nor the substantial retainer charge and billable hour capability that conventional complete service delivers when they understand just how much cash you have. And they will know just how much cash you have because you have to disclose that as part of the divorce process. So how smart is that?
“Unbundled” services (in some cases called “limited scope representation”) are when you employ a lawyer but only to do certain specified jobs in a case. The lawyer does not provide a traditional full representation in which s/he is accountable for the whole case.
In an uncontested divorce, for instance, you would more than likely do your own filing of papers at your local Alameda County court. You would handle the simple service of legal documents on your spouse by a friend or relative, 18 or older. And you would technically function as your own lawyer in the case.
The “unbundled” lawyer you hire would normally just deliver you with a brief strategy session, prepare your legal documents, review your case, highlight issues, recommend you what to do about those issues and evaluate your docs before they are filed at court. That is precisely what you desire from an inexpensive uncontested divorce lawyer in Berkeley.
Generally your unbundled deal would incorporate a specific amount of phone calls or email responses. Beyond that, you would purchase any additional.
This is an extremely effective and affordable method to obtain an uncontested divorce in Alameda County. And as long as you are alerted of the precise services that are being offered by your lawyer for his or her low flat cost and of the prospective triggers to increase those costs, then you remain in realistic control of your case. It ends up being more of a purchaser’s market. Your lawyer’s fee is not determined by his/her BMW payment.
Another clear advantage of unbundled is that should your case blow up, and in some instances they do, then you have the very best divorce lawyer in Berkeley who already understands your case and is on your team. Yes, it will cost more if your case becomes disputed, but that would always have been true no matter who you hired, and you will already know what those extra costs will be.
When you hire a conventional full-service lawyer to handle your uncontested divorce, the huge fees are a certainty. If you hire an “unbundled” lawyer, those substantial costs solely occur if your case blows up, which typically suggests that your spouse unexpectedly contests the case on one or more issues.
Flat fee unbundled is a lot better a tactical position for you to be in.
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Low-Cost Divorce Attorney Berkeley
Online Divorce Lawyer – Uber for Uncontested Divorce –
My name is Peter O’Hanlon. I’m the CEO and founder of Online Divorce Lawyer.
Why should you even listen to what I have to say about California divorce? I’ve been a lawyer (barrister) in my native UK for over 40 years. I wrote the world’s first divorce software (for California divorce) in 1983-4. I launched California Legal Assistance Centers on June 1, 1981. I pioneered cheap divorce by mail in California. I was a founding member of the California Association of Independent Paralegals. In a joint venture, I put up the world’s first divorce online website at divorceweb.com in March 1999. I launched NetDivorce, the premier divorce online provider in California, in 1999. I was the founding director of the Online Divorce Association of America in September 2016 and I launched Online Divorce Lawyer, the REAL Uber for California uncontested divorce in November 2018.
I have been on the front line of California divorce since June 1981. I know California divorce inside out. I know what I’m talking about.
I recognized that since the beginning of the Internet, ignored and long-suffering California divorce consumers have had only three choices for their uncontested divorce cases:
- DIY: You used to be able to do your own divorce in California without professional help. There was a Nolo Press book that showed you how. That was the 1980’s. Then California divorce got complex in very many ways. A recent Insider Monkey study found California to be the second most difficult divorce process in the whole country. By the late-’80s, the Nolo Press book began to tell you in the foreword that the book could no longer be used on its own to get a divorce. Today, DIY in California divorce is a fool’s errand. You won’t succeed, particularly if you have a job or a life.
- Traditional divorce lawyers with $3500 to $7500+ retainer fees that they burn through as fast as possible to get to the $450 per hour billables. No matter how simple and locked tight your uncontested case is, these old-fashioned thoroughly dishonest lawyers will scare the crap out of you with what MIGHT happen if you don’t hire them. They will tell you ANYTHING to get you to pay that retainer. A headache could be brain cancer, but it’s probably not. If you have a headache, you take an aspirin. You don’t call a neurosurgeon. If you have an uncontested divorce in California, you don’t call a $7500+ lawyer.
- Unlicensed, unregulated online divorce mills, mostly from out-of-state but many in India, Ukraine, Mexico and the Czech Republic. These are completely incompetent frauds. Most of them claim a $139 “complete fee,” but when you read their terms you will find that the $139 is a subscription for the first 30 days only. They will then hit your credit card every month until you cancel. I mean every month well beyond the end of your 6-month California divorce. If you read their hundreds of Better Business Bureau complaints, you will find that you can NEVER reach the guy who is able to help you cancel. Some of these now also have ANNUAL fees as well as monthly. If you want your personal data to be cut-and-pasted by someone’s grandmother in Mumbai, an online divorce mill is the way to go.
It’s difficult to figure out whether the conmen in India and Ukraine are worse than the traditional lawyers in Alameda County. Certainly, those lawyers are more expensive. The conmen only take a few hundred dollars. Oh, and they will also screw up your divorce so that you will REALLY need a traditional lawyer to get the mess sorted.
So that was the situation Online Divorce Lawyer faced when it said, “No more. There will be a fourth option that is a Best of Both Worlds option – the convenience, low-cost and self-empowerment of online divorce PLUS the safety and security that your divorce is done by a licensed local California divorce lawyer. All at a competitive price to the Ukrainian conmen!”
Our assets were our proprietary software and other client support systems. They are bulletproof. The wicked-cool software is the much-upgraded software I wrote in 1983-4. It is superb. It crunches all issues in a California uncontested or default divorce. It makes no mistakes. Our various other systems – written instructions, email comms., live chat, auto case updates, online help, video helpers and huge knowledge base are also excellent and all developed and improved over very long periods of time.
So none of the time your Online Divorce Lawyer will spend on your case will be wasted. None of it is spent on doing repetitive things. Every minute of that time is spent in analyzing the facts of your case to check for any issues that could develop into problems and in reviewing your legal documents before they are filed at court.
Make the Lawyer Fit Your Case – Don’t Make Your Case Fit the Lawyer
That is the business model that we offer California divorce lawyers when they sign up for Online Divorce Lawyer. It’s a highly efficient model for uncontested divorce practice. It enables savvy California divorce lawyers (who also offer free consultation) to charge a California divorce cost in the vicinity of $700-$1500 and it is what enables them to offer you, the Alameda County divorce consumer a much better and more valuable service (to file divorce online in California) than that offered by the clueless, out-of-state, unlicensed, unregulated online divorce mills or the traditional lawyer fee-gougers.
Why Not the Best of Both Worlds?
Why would you ever risk your legal and economic future by hiring an unqualified, unregulated out-of-state online divorce mill for $300-1100? They’re going to screw up your case and you will either pay for their mistakes forever or hire the best California divorce lawyer in Berkeley to clean up their mess. That’s not a cheap divorce. That’s a dumb divorce. Don’t do it! Why not just start with the best affordable divorce lawyer in Berkeley?
We highly commend your local Online Divorce Lawyer to you and we hope that you will reward the problem solving courage of that lawyer in your hiring decision.
Why not have the best of both worlds in your uncontested divorce? Why not hire the best online divorce lawyer in Berkeley – who offers unbundled services at a competitive fee and who will actually conduct a legal rights checkup on your case and review your documents. Your local Online Divorce Lawyer will use the wicked-cool Online Divorce Lawyer software to crunch your data and documents and you will be using your local Online Divorce Lawyer ONLY where you need him or her. And if your case blows up, you have the insurance policy of already having the best online divorce lawyer in Berkeley on your team and s/he already knows your case.
If the best of both worlds makes sense to you, get started by either of the following options:
Those are dishonest fees and the attorneys offering them are dishonest. They are using price tag anchoring strategies that are worthy of used-car salespersons. Those are the fees lawyers used to price quote to your grandparents. There is no requirement to be courteous to such attorneys. Just hang up. Do not educate them.
The problem with the providers in this group is that they are all aggressive up-sellers. Their only goal is to get you signed up to a cheaper package and then up-sell you to a $1500-$4500 package.