We are often asked:-
I don’t want to waste money. I can’t afford huge legal fees but I need to use a lawyer. how can I get the best value for money and keep costs down?
A. Having a lawyer saves you from ending up stuck and caught up in the same sort of fights with your ex that led to the separation. Even worse, sometimes people without legal advice find themselves agreeing to things that are less than fair.
However costs are obviously an issue. There are ways to manageyour costs if your law firm is co-operative. Journey Family Lawyers offer a service called ” unbundling” . This means that we are prepared to assist you as you do it yourself)or you can take on some work on your own behalf while we do the tricky legal stuff.
You still have us as lawyers but we can step in and out of your case as you need us.
Perhaps an example will help you understand this concept.
Say you have been served with Court Documents. You need a lawyer to prepare some or all of the documents for you, but don’t don’t necessarily need us to do the photocopying, court filing or arrange service of the documents. Or you might want us to do all those things. You would definitely want a lawyer to go to court for you but may not want to be paying a lawyer to answer tons and tons of correspondence from your ex. So you could ask us to step out of your matter until the time to prepare for the next court date. This is a much better use of your funds.
Unbundling is a concept that has been around for a while in the U S. It is unpopular with most law firms because there is a lot of Ceasing to Act notices and corresponding Notices of Address for service to be filed and it can confuse the Courts and the other side’s lawyers.I even had one lawyer tell me I shouldn’t do it! But Journey Family Lawyers have been doing it for years. It works! And our clients get to use great lawyers no matter that their budget is limited.
