Technology has made life easier for family law attorneys, and it has also made it more difficult. Decades ago, lawyers used to dictate legal memorandums and even letters to clients and professional typists in person or on tiny tape recorders. Now you can just dictate to your computer, and it will type much more quickly, and then you or an employee of your law office can simply edit the document. Likewise, the Internet makes law firm marketing less expensive. Building and maintaining a website costs less than running ads in the newspaper, and with Google searches, prospective clients come looking for you whenever they need you. You no longer have to pay for a billboard with a larger-than-life picture of your face; no matter how flattering the picture looked when it was small enough to fit into a picture frame, the sight of your nostrils looking down over the whole city fills you with embarrassment. If the digital age has brought new opportunities and challenges to marketing, it has also done this with mediation, which is how most family law attorneys make their bread and butter.
Mediation is for Almost Everyone
If you went into the legal profession with dreams of giving show-stopping performances in the courtroom, you are in for disappointment. Most cases do not go to trial; some of them even reach an eleventh-hour settlement right before your cue to go on stage and bring the house down. The converse is that if going to trial fills you with trepidation, the good news is that, as a family law attorney, you will not have to do it very often. You can tailor your marketing content and brand identity to attract clients going through high-conflict divorce who have the resources for a legal battle with one or more trials, or you can tailor it to attract clients whose legal issues are simpler and who want the least expensive path to an acceptable family situation.
Whether you seek out simple divorce and parenting plan cases or complex ones, the court will order almost all of your clients to attend mediation if they have hired you to represent them in a divorce case or to establish a parenting plan with an ex to whom they were never legally married. Most couples can reach a resolution to the legal dispute during mediation; the court will only schedule a trial after the couple makes a good-faith effort to settle their divorce or finalize a parenting plan in mediation but is not successful. The only cases where the court does not order mediation as a prerequisite to trial are the ones where one spouse or ex has a restraining order against the other because of domestic violence.
No One is Neutral on Social Media
The Internet has made it easier for exes going through a bitter breakup to find lawyers to represent them in their divorce or co-parenting case, but it has made it harder to de-escalate conflicts. Cyberbullying is not just for middle school students. Your clients’ exes might try to mobilize the entire Internet to make your clients’ lives miserable. Your job is to be the voice of reason when your clients are looking online for validation of their worst impulses and easily find it. Remind your clients that everything they say online can and will be used against them, and that applies to your clients’ exes, too. That means that your clients should take screenshots of their exes’ worst online behavior. It also means that they should think twice before clicking “post.”
What Can Family Lawyers Do to Promote Successful Mediation in Family Law Cases?
Finding a satisfactory resolution in mediation is not easy when your clients are spoiling for a fight and the whole Internet is egging them on. Remind yourself that it is in everyone’s interest for the divorce to settle in mediation. It means that you do not get paid for a trial, but it also means that you do not have to spend years in court fighting about whose responsibility it is to pay the attorneys’ fees. Start preparing your clients early on for a divorce that ends in mediation. Decide on their non-negotiables early on. Have them choose a maximum of three non-negotiables and then accept that the rest is just details. Set ground rules about divorce-related Internet use, such as when you feel like cyberstalking your ex or trash-talking your ex to your mutual friends, open your Tetris app and play Tetris instead, or email your lawyer.
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