Unbundled Services/Limited Representation – San Jose Divorce Attorney
Unbundled legal services change the strategic balance regarding you and your divorce lawyer in an uncontested divorce. You reacquire the leverage since you direct the services offered and the costs charged– or at least, the realities of your case do.
And there becomes a substantial difference in what a lawyer can charge you when his/her scope is limited. S/he no longer has unlimited obligation plus knowledge of just how much credit you have – nor the huge retainer cost and billable hour ability that conventional full service ensures when they understand just how much money you have. And they will know just how much credit you have due to the fact that you will have to divulge that as part of the divorce process. So how wise is that?
“Unbundled” services (sometimes called “limited scope representation”) are when you hire a lawyer but only to do particular distinct jobs in a case. The lawyer does not supply a conventional full representation in which s/he is accountable for the entire case.
In an uncontested divorce, for instance, you would more than likely do your own filing of papers at your regional Santa Clara County court. You would handle the easy service of documents on your spouse by a friend or relative, 18 or older. And you would technically act as your own lawyer in the case.
The “unbundled” lawyer you hire would usually only supply you with a short strategy session, prepare your papers, review your case, highlight concerns, encourage you what to do about those concerns and evaluate your docs before they are submitted at court. That is exactly what you desire from a cheap uncontested divorce lawyer in San Jose.
Normally your unbundled contract would include things like a specific number of phone calls or email responses. Beyond that, you would purchase any extra.
This is an extremely effective and cost-effective method to get an uncontested divorce in Santa Clara County. And as long as you are alerted of the precise services that are being provided by your lawyer for his/her low flat cost and of the prospective triggers to increase those fees, then you remain in reasonable control of your case. It ends up being more of a buyer’s market. Your lawyer’s fee is not determined by his or her BMW payment.
Another clear advantage of unbundled is that should your case blow up, and sometimes they do, then you have the very best divorce lawyer in San Jose who already understands your case and is on your team. Yes, it will cost more if your case ends up being disputed, but that would always have held true no matter who you hired, and you will already understand what those additional costs will be.
When you hire a conventional full-service lawyer to manage your uncontested divorce, the excessive fees are a certainty. If you employ an “unbundled” lawyer, those significant costs only take place if your case blows up, which generally implies that your partner unexpectedly contests the case on one or more issues.
Flat charge unbundled is so much better a tactical position for you to be in.
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San Jose Divorce Attorney
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 Santa Clara 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 Santa Clara 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 San Jose 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 San Jose?
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 San Jose – 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 San Jose 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 lawyers quoting them are dishonest. They are using price anchoring strategies that are worthy of used-car salesmen. Those are the costs attorneys used to quote to your grandparents. There is no need to be polite to such attorneys. Simply hang up. Don’t enlighten 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.