One consideration in choosing an attorney is his or her investment in, and commitment to, technology. This can be important in deciding whether he or she can serve your needs. While computers, software, and online services may not lower your cost, they should increase the level of service, and have become a necessity.
In San Diego County, with about 150 certified family law specialists, the level of technology in many offices has become quite high. A well equipped family law office needs to be tech savvy.
It's a lot more than e-mail and word processing. For about 20 years, California has had child support "guidelines" that can realistically only be calculated by a computer program. I use quotes because California's guidelines are essentially mandatory figures. These programs take the parties' gross incomes from various sources, calculate state and Federal income taxes, apply custody time share, and provide the judge with the amount of child support to be ordered. That amount is mandatory in almost every case.
Without a computer, it is no longer possible to estimate child support for purposes of guiding the client or negotiating a settlement, except in unusual situations [such as a zero custody timeshare for one parent]. Beyond word processing, this has become an almost elemental use of technology for family law lawyers, and saves endless hours and provides accurate data - although there are websites that provide calculations, they are primitive, and don't allow the data to be provided to the lawyer and client in useful ways. With a dedicated support program installed, for example, a lawyer can quickly try different scenarios, such as shifting tax exemptions, and plan for better tax consequences for the parties; he or she can show the after tax effect of support, how the net incomes are split between the parties, and the impact of different tax strategies.
The need for computers doesn't stop there. Networked computers allow lawyers and paralegals to access computer files with ease - no more "sneaker net" to share files, no more running floppy disks around the office or to and from you home. With a virtual private network, we can access our files remotely: For example, while negotiating a settlement in another lawyer's office, working from home when a staff member is ill or must care for a sick child, or sitting at the courthouse.
High speed scanners allow incoming mail and documents to be converted to electronic files, then immediately transmitted to clients or opposing counsel. We can save $5 in postage [or $20 for FedEx in a rush], and yet get copies of the opponent's document production or court pleadings the day received - this permits faster turn around, and better preparation for court.
Sure, you can use a fax machine, but that is 1980's technology [actually 1970's] - paper jams, toner cartridges to replace, fuzzy print, a phone line, and constant monitoring - faxes are labor intensive and provide a poor quality copy - and they usually require the client to have a working machine, turned on and operating.
If an opposing attorney can e-mail me a copy of a proposed agreement, order, or stipulation, I can quickly cut and paste in my own suggested changes and e-mail them back in a matter of minutes. Last week, an attorney's paralegal complained that a real estate offer signed by my client was illegible. I'm not sure what she expected: The fine print had been faxed to them from a real estate broker, they faxed their copy to me, and we scanned it for our client - she signed, faxed it back, and we forwarded that copy to the other side. By that time, the fine print was a smudge.
Too many people in the chain lacked the ability to scan the document and transfer a clean copy, or had primitive fax machines - that is changing, as we move away from faxes. After all, faxes are very old technology and we all need to move along when something better is invented. It helps that we have scanners that can convert 30 pages per minute, and up.
Then there is basic research capability. I subscribe to a computer program that electronically stores and indexes every major legal principle in family law. It contains brief summaries of the case law, and copies of virtually all relevant statutes - if I want more than the summary, the program includes the full text of every significant decision on the subject.
I can search the program by key words: If I remember that a certain principal of law in an appellate case was the result of a fight over a Rolls Royce, but can't remember the name of the case, I can search for the brand of the vehicle - a summary of the relevant case will pop up on the screen in seconds. Same result if the parties were fighting over ownership of a motel, where I can instantaneously find every major case where the word "motel" is found - if I am searching for the key words, I might turn up 50 cases to review, rather than the one case dealing with a motel. ,This allows me to quickly narrow the search if I remember a detail from the case I am looking for.
Because California is such a large legal market [a lot of lawyers], there are enough lawyers to justify the research and writing to create such a program and provide regular updates - lawyers in other states must rely on online tools [or paper indexes] that are much more difficult to use and require monthly subscription fees and an active Internet connection.
Another program enables us to maintain a database of the parties' assets, debts, and requests for credits - the database allows us to include an attorney's notes about a piece of property, the dates of appraisals, and each party's claims or testimony on the subject. Then, it can use just the identification of the item and a stated value [and secured debt] for placement on court required forms, either with or without the notes. One set [without the notes] can be prepared for the opposing side, and the more complete set kept in the file to refresh the attorney's memory about his client's positions or the opponent's prior comments on the issue. Or, acopy of the data can be kept electronically on a laptop computer for access in court or at a settlement meeting. More than anything else, it eliminates the need to search through boxes of files to find a document, link to a declaration, or read a deposition or court transcript.
Recently, a friend showed up at court for a two day trial, beaming that he had a copy of everything in the client's file on a CD in a slot in his laptop, in case he needed quick access to a document or wanted to make an electronic search of the data [in addition to the boxes of paper files of the same information he had on a cart trailing behind him]. That is a coming fact of life as we scan more and more documents. [He and I both have the same 35 page per minute scanners, crunching out huge .pdf files of all our paper]
When trying to calculate support arrearages, we have special programs to insert due and payment dates, calculate interest and penalties, and provide instantaneous updates of totals as days pass, new support comes due, or payments are made. If we find and error, a change can be inserted and all the calculations of arrearages and interest are instantly updated. [Yes, we could build Excel spreadsheets to do this, but a special program is easier to use and provides the information in more easily understandable form.]
For more than 15 years, we've had programs that fill out court forms. We can enter the client's data into a program, including such mundane information as the case name and number [or names and dates of birth of the children], and automatically print that information on every court form we must prepare and file, without retyping every time - that eliminates mistakes from typographical errors, as well as saving staff time. Gone are endless hours at a typewriter filling in forms.
Then, there's online research: Westlaw and Lexis-Nexis have huge databases, searchable by key words, covering 160 years of California law: Not to mention virtually all Federal law going back to the beginning of time, and statutes and case law from all states, newspaper articles, and public records. Legal treatises that used to require a careful staff person to pull and replace pages as updates were received by mail, are now accessible and searchable through an Internet connection, paid for either by subscription or on a per-case basis.
One other thing these companies provide is searchable access to public records - real estate transactions, corporate filings, court cases - these can be invaluable in finding people, assets, and business interests: Imagine entering a post office box, and finding out every corporation, partnership, or mailing address that has used that address in public filings around your state - often, we can find the name of everyone living at a particular residence [such as a former spouse's co-habitee]. How about the prior divorce cases for a party, where there might be some interesting information? Prior or pending criminal cases in some distant county, of even in another state?
All of this technology provides a higher level of service - coming with it is the increased cost of doing business. Most of these tools require ongoing costs for updates, maintenance and repairs. Each lawyer prices this in a different way, usually into the hourly rate plus online research charges on an as-needed basis.
The research program we can keep on the computer to take to court costs about $1200 to start, with annual updates of about $600. The programs with our court forms and guideline calculations are a little less expensive, but still have substantial annual update fees - the forms change several times a year, and tax rates change annually.
Our database program for court forms is much more complete than some of the older programs [which wouldn't print out the data onto court forms], but only comes as a subscription - on April 30th, last year's version became unusable, so we couldn't even access our work without paying for an annual update. The database program for calendaring and keeping track of client information is outrageously expensive - a $5000 upgrade may be good for several years.
Westlaw and Lexis are subscription services, each about $250 per month for a small office, plus the extra cost of access to their treatises - and these fees don't include the cost of searches for other states, Federal law, or more complex law books, without paying additional, and expensive, search fees.
None of these software charges include the cost of computers, printers, Internet connections, education and training, and maintenance of hardware and software. The annual technology budget in the small family law office can easily run into the tens of thousands of dollars per year.
As we add these tools to our arsenals, the must rise, along with a hoped for increase in the quality of service. And don't even get me started on the concept of "the paperless society." We buy copy and printer paper by the truckload.
The point of this post is to help explain why the hourly rate is so high - it comes with technology that a law practice requires to operate efficiently - expect your lawyer to own and use the latest technology.
