Elsewhere, I've written about the "ambiguity" of advertising by lawyers, making themselves seem bigger than life, experts at everything, and the best there is. This devolves from court decisions that lawyers should be able to advertise just like every other business. It rarely has helped get information out to the public - often it is merely a way to generate business to be handled by inexperienced lawyers.
In a local newspaper last week in a community where I have an office, I found an ad for an attorney who bragged about how good he is at handling big asset divorces. The community is filled with wealthy families, with multimillion dollar homes - the kind of market from which big divorces come. The first thing I noticed was the name: In 30 years of practicing family law, often in court daily, I'd never heard of the man. Next, the fact that he "offices" in each of the 3 wealthiest neighborhoods [all within 10 miles of one another].
So I looked further to see who he was. It was almost comical. The "main office" was a house near the beach. The office labeled in my community was actually 5 miles away, the address of a business attorney I don't know - I didn't check out the others, but assumed he has agreements to use a conference room wherever he can find a client.
Then I assumed these are ways a lawyer from somewhere else in California who is moving here to retire might seek a few cases - but it surprised me that the lawyer specifically limited the practice to divorces. Yet, he wasn't a certified specialist in family law. So I looked further. Where's the lawyer's real office: A large city in the mid-West, according to what he lists with the State Bar of California.
The lawyer was admitted to the California Bar about 3 years ago, and has a broad litigation practice in his home state. Maybe after 30 years of practice in mid-West winters, he decided to get a beach house in sunny San Diego to visit in winter, and while here why not try to skim off a case or two? Maybe he deducts his vacations?
I wonder how he can handle court appearance, especially those continued by the court at the last minute, or those appearances calendered on 24 hours notice.
And, more important, what experience does this person have with California law? We are a community property state - when we decided in 1969 to divide our property exactly in half, it developed a cottage industry in determining what half is, and what credits and charges we apply. Our support rights and obligations are governed by complex rules, changing weekly as appellate courts rule in nuances.
A couple of years ago, I was hired by a woman who had interviewed with another high-advertising firm, one I knew to be owned by lawyers who live in another state and have a mill of lawyers handling the cases they suck in. She'd interviewed with that firm's managing partner [he'd been a lawyer about 5 years], and was being handed off to a family law specialist with 20 years of experience.
Having met this attorney a few months earlier at a bar association function, I knew she had practiced law in California for 9 months, also coming from a cold-winter mid-Western state where she had learned little about community property. With 3 or 4 years of full-time family law practice, she had the potential for being a competent lawyer, but that's full-time here dealing with our courts, our laws, our experts.
80% of what we do as lawyers is based on our knowledge of what our judges do, and the culture of practice in our communities. When out-of-town lawyers come to San Diego and complain about the bad orders they get, they say they were "home towned", blaming the result on the fact that the judges know the locals. In reality, they don't realize they can't get our judges to exercise their discretion on certain issues the same way they do in their counties.
Since almost every area of family law is governed by "the sound discretion of the trial judge," there is wide variance in rulings. Within jurisdictions, the range of discretion narrows substantially as judges see merit in what others are doing and modify their rulings.
Beyond the tax law that permeates much of our practice, and our knowledge of how to handle our clients, little translates between community property states [found mostly in the west] and equitable distribution states.
