How to Choose a Divorce Lawyer in Memphis

From The Mid-South Divorce Guide, chapter 3, by William W. Jones
IV, a Memphis family law attorney and Rule 31 Listed Family Mediator
licensed in Tennessee and Mississippi. This guide covers Shelby, Tipton
and Fayette Counties in Tennessee and DeSoto, Tate and Tunica Counties
in Mississippi.

Questions this page answers

• How do I choose a divorce lawyer?
• What questions should I ask a divorce attorney?
• Is a retainer refundable?
• How much should a divorce lawyer cost?

Sit in three chairs before you pick one. This is the only stage of
the whole process where comparison costs you nothing, and you are about
to hand somebody the most consequential decisions of your adult
life.

I tell that to every person who walks into my office, including the
ones I would like to keep.

What follows is not a checklist. There are twenty of those online,
they all ask the same twenty questions, and any lawyer who has been at
this more than a year has smooth answers ready for every one of them.
What is below is what I would actually be listening for if I were the
one in the chair, and some of it is not a question at all.

Ask about the
division, not about the county

Have you tried a case in front of my judge?

Divorce law is statewide and divorce practice is not. Shelby County
has multiple divisions handling domestic matters, each with a judge, a
clerk, and a set of expectations about how things get done, and those
expectations are not written down anywhere you can read them. How much
notice that division wants before a hearing. Whether it will hear
something on the phone. What it thinks about continuances. Whether a
particular kind of temporary request is worth setting at all or whether
it is going to get you a look you do not want.

None of that appears in a rule book. It appears in a lawyer who has
stood there.

The same is true across the line in DeSoto County, and it is the
reason a competent Nashville lawyer is not automatically the right
choice for a Memphis case. Ask where they practice most. Ask when they
were last in front of your judge. A lawyer learning your division while
you pay for it is a real and expensive thing, and it is invisible to you
until it is not.

Find out where your
money is going to sit

Ask it in exactly these words. When I write this check, where does
the money go.

At my firm it goes into a trust account, which is an account I am not
permitted to spend out of. The money stays yours while it sits there. I
bill against it as I earn it, and if we finish before it is used up,
what is left is still yours, because it never stopped being yours.

Other offices structure the same payment as a fee earned when the
firm accepts the case. There are sound reasons a practice is run that
way and it is entirely proper. It also means the money belongs to the
firm from the day you hand it over, so a case that wraps in ninety days
wraps with nothing sitting in an account.

Both arrangements are common in this town and neither one is a red
flag. Being unclear about which one you signed is a red flag, and that
clarity is not going to arrive on its own while you are holding a
pen.

While you are on the subject, ask what happens when the money runs
low. Every busy office reaches a point where it asks a client to put
more in. You want to know now where that point is, how much warning you
get, and what the office does if you cannot meet it that month, because
that answer describes how the relationship behaves under strain, and
strain is the only condition it is ever going to face.

How fast do you return calls

Before anybody gives you a number, sit with this.

On the day your case is the one called in front of the judge, you are
going to want your lawyer thinking about nothing but you. Not stepping
into the hallway between witnesses to handle somebody else’s question.
That undivided attention is the whole product you are buying, and it
only exists if it works in both directions. Which means the afternoon
you are waiting on a call back is very often an afternoon when somebody
else’s case is the one on the docket.

Now the number. Forty-eight hours is the honest one. A lawyer in
trial is gone. A lawyer in a mediation is in a room from nine in the
morning until eight at night with no signal and no intention of stepping
out. Put a weekend against that and same day is simply not a promise
anybody can keep. If somebody promises it anyway, they are telling you
what you want to hear, which is worth noticing this early.

Two days without a word is normal. A week without a word, or a week
with nobody in the office able to tell you anything, is a real problem
and you should say so out loud rather than stewing.

The better question is how the office is built. A firm where a
paralegal answers routine questions the same afternoon will make you far
less crazy than one where everything, including what time to show up,
waits on the attorney.

This is not the
time to shop the clearance rack

I love a bargain. When I walk into a clothing store I go straight to
the back and look for the clearance rack before I look at anything else.
My wife will tell you this. It is a personality trait.

This is not that.

Hiring the cheapest lawyer in town is the most expensive decision
available to you, and it is expensive in a way you do not see until much
later. Here is what actually happens. The low quote usually means one of
three things. It means a volume practice, where the price works only
because the work is standardized, and a case that will not standardize
gets handled like one anyway. Or it means a lawyer who has not done many
of these, so you are paying for their education. Or it means a quote
that was never real, and the number climbs once you are in and it is
expensive to leave.

And the cost of a bad result does not show up on an invoice. It shows
up in a parenting schedule you live with for twelve years. It shows up
in a retirement account that got divided wrong and nobody caught it
until you were sixty. It shows up in a mortgage you are still on for a
house you do not own. Those are five and six figure mistakes that
started as a two thousand dollar savings.

None of that is an argument for hiring whoever charges the most, and
I would be suspicious of any lawyer who made that argument to you.

Here is the arithmetic people miss. The rate tells you what one hour
costs. It tells you nothing at all about how many hours, and the second
number is between five and forty times larger than the first. I have
watched a firm at four hundred an hour finish a case for less than a
firm at two-fifty, because the expensive one knew on day one which three
fights were worth having. You are not shopping for a price. You are
shopping for a total, and the only part of the total anybody will show
you in a consultation is the part that matters least.

Shop the clearance rack for a winter coat. Not for this.

Download the whole guide. All 35 chapters plus four blank client forms, complimentary, no email required. Download The Mid-South Divorce Guide (PDF)

Questions about your own situation? The Jones Law Firm, 5100 Poplar Ave, Suite 708, Memphis, TN 38137. Call (901) 761-5353.