I’ve Found My Divorce Attorney… Now What?

Congratulations! You’ve done it! You spent hours reading reviews, asking friends, searching your area, explaining the personal details of your situation over and over again to a handful of strangers, thought about it, and maybe even gone in for a face to face consult or two but you did it – you’ve hired an attorney to represent you in your divorce. If you’ve read our last post about how hiring an attorney is kind of like dating, you’ll know just how important it is to find someone that not only meets your expectations but is also someone that you connect with and trust (if you haven’t read it yet, you should take a look at that now!).

SO NOW WHAT? WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

First things first: you should schedule a strategy session with your new team. You may have already gone through a consultation but unless you paid for the legal time, you probably got vague and non-specific answers on where to go and how to achieve your goals. Good lawyers don’t throw out legal advice for free or off the cuff just to get you to become a client!

Your strategy session is going to be the foundation on which your case in the divorce is built. No matter how typical you think your divorce may be, no matter how mundane the details may sound, no two divorces and no two clients are ever the same. This is the time for your attorney to dig deep into the background of what has brought you to them. This may involve looking over personal records or documents that you have or talking about things you would otherwise want to keep private. Providing these details is critically important because it paints the picture of where you are, where you want to go, and how we’re going to get there. Without honesty, your attorney will not be able to advocate for you.

You should leave your strategy session with a clear understanding about how the laws in Massachusetts apply to your unique legal matter, insight into how the firm is going to guide you through your case, a general outline of a strategy that you helped your attorney build, a clear outline of what your goals are and a realistic view on how to achieve them, and a clear understanding on what the next steps are going to be over the course of the next 30 days – but that’s a blog for another day!