A New Way to Get A Divorce: Do you want to get your divorce quickly and
without spending thousands of dollars on legal fees?
There is a new movement underway
in the legal profession to provide legal services at a reasonable cost. This
method is called "unbundling legal services".
When legal services are "unbundled," you purchase just the legal services you
need when you need them and at a fixed price, rather than an hourly rate.
Another name for this concept is "legal services a la carte or
Attorney-Assisted Pro Se Support"
Follow these five
steps to resolving your legal problem at the lowest possible cost:
1. Read our Law Guide for jargon-free explanations of many
divorce questions. Register as a client you can download my book, "How
Do Your Own Divorce in Maryland" for free..
 2.
Brief legal advice
may be just the service you need to answer your questions or to help
you figure out a procedure. We offer legal advice by email on order to
keep costs down to you the client.
This service
is appropriate for use to determine whether you have a legal issue and
to find out what options you may have.
 3. Resolve Your Dispute Without an Attorney.
Before resorting to litigation, try mediation. You may be able to
resolve the remaining issues between you your spouse without
an attorney. If you settle the one or two issues that are preventing
you from reaching an agreement, you can incorporate your understanding
into a Marital Separation Agreement. This makes your divorce an
uncontested divorce. Once your divorce is uncontested, you can
represent yourself as a pro se party saving thousands of dollars in
legal fees. There are networks of low cost
mediation centers evolving throughout the United States to meet the demand for
alternative dispute settlement services.
Check out our Directory of Mediators in Maryland.
Can you really
represent yourself in your own divorce?
We believe that with accurate and complete legal advice a person of
reasonable intelligence and education can represent themselves in a
wide variety of uncontested family law matters. This assumption
is based on fact. In an evaluation study undertaken by the University
of Maryland School of Law of a sample drawn from over 10,000 pro
se litigants in family matters in Maryland Courts, seventy-four
(74%) of the reported that they were satisfied with the result and
would represent themselves again. Fifty-four (54%) percent reported
that they decided to represent themselves because they thought a
lawyer would be too expensive, and an additional eighteen (18%)
reported that they represented themselves because they did not think
that the problem was sufficiently complicated that a lawyer's services
were required. These research findings are supported by similar
research in other jurisdictions which are collected at the
Pro Se Law Center.
There are situations when you should not represent yourself and you
should seek the assistance of counsel. These situations include where
you have substantial assets;
1. Where you and your spouse cannot reach agreement on custody,
visitation, or child support issues; or
2. Where your spouse is uncooperative or has been abusive; or
3. Where your spouse is hiding assets from you or is unwilling to
disclose all of his or her assets.
On the other hand
if your dispute is uncontested,
securing a legal result is only a matter of filing the correct legal
documents in the correct order.
If you can follow instructions, you
can represent yourself as a pro se litigant -- you don't have
to have three years of law school.
4.
If you need limited legal services or are sure about whether you can
complete and file your forms with some assistance from an attorney,
you can purchase these services at this web site. We are the only law
firm in Maryland that offers these services.
 5.. Finally,
if you think you do think you need the full in-office services of an attorney,
search the Directory of Attorneys
at the Civil Justice Network to find an attorney near your
home who is willing to work with you to provide services at at
affordable rate.
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