For Better, Worse, Or Divorce Podcast

In this episode, Brian Walters and Jake Gilbreath break down what happens after you officially retain a law firm for your divorce. From understanding the consultation process and attorney-client privilege to filing the petition, setting communication expectations, and handling temporary orders, Brian and Jake walk through those crucial first steps. The attorneys wrap up the episode by answering common new client questions about billing, timelines, and financial concerns.

If you are interested in speaking to someone at the firm about your family law matter, visit us at www.waltersgilbreath.com or email us at podcast@waltersgilbreath.com.

Brian Walters: Thanks for tuning into the For Better or Worse or Divorce Podcast where we provide you tips and insights on how to navigate divorce and child custody situations in Texas. I’m Brian Walters, I’m one of the partners here at Walters Gilbreath, PLLC. I’m joined by Jake Gilbreath, my other partner. We’ll be unpacking what happens and what someone can expect in the first step of the divorce process.

What you can expect after you officially retain your law firm and your divorce, or I assume just probably any family law matter. Just to recap, what generally happens in these cases is people contact us, they have a family law matter, maybe they’ve been served with papers, maybe they want to take action initially. Typically, there’s a consultation often with Jake or myself, but it could be anybody.

We talk with them about what’s going to happen, what are possible outcomes, cost, all those other kinds of things that people want to know about. If they decide they need a lawyer and when they want that to be us, then they’ll retain us by signing a contract. We try real hard to lay out what the first steps are and we talk about that at the consult and email people about it ahead of time.

We know there’s a lot going on, especially if you’ve been served and got a hearing right around the corner or something. We thought we’d do a podcast on that very first set of steps after you hire us. The first thing we do is we give you some homework back like the school days. Jake, do you want to talk a little bit about what’s in the homework and what to expect, and how it’s tailored to their particular needs?

Jake Gilbreath: Every single case is different, but there’s some consistent themes and some things that we need in every single case, right? If you’re going through a child custody case and support’s going to be an issue, or if you’re going through a divorce and spousal support’s going to be an issue, either temporary and final, one thing you’re going to get from us is a proposed support decision or a financial information sheet, depending on your jurisdiction.

Essentially giving us your budget, right? That could be a little labor-intensive if we get that right away. Then we’re sending you essentially what we call a story sheet, which has things in there asking for timelines and documents and identifying assets like a big overview of your case. We’ll obviously have generally discussed this in the consultation, but we’re going to be looking for more information from you the client.

Putting that work on the client to give us the information that we’re going to need to proceed with the case to respond to discovery, to prepare for hearings, what have you. I think it’s important to point out that a lot of the discovery that we’re seeing in the clients is going to be interactive. A lot of times we’re using Google Docs to work with people. We’re doing it in a way that everybody can collaborate and work together.

We’re going to be sending, for example, a shared drive to where you have an ability to drop documents to us so we can see whatever documents you’re sharing, you don’t have to email them or anything like that. You can if you want, but we’re going to have a shared drive so we’re all looking at the same stuff together, because that information gathering part, again, a lot done in the console, but the more detailed information gathering is going to drive in a lot of the cases.

You are most likely going to be going through discovery or if you’re having a hearing, you’re going to be prepared for that. I always tell people, the more information that you can give your lawyers, obviously the better job that we’re going to do. The other thing I tell people too is really the more information you can give your lawyer, ironically the more you actually save time and money, in my opinion.

When my clients ask me in the initial consultation, “what can I do to save money or be more efficient”, I tell them, “Give me more and more and more information. The more information you can give me, actually the more efficient we’ll be because not efficient is when I’m having to chase down clients to pull bank statements from them or trying to get their timelines from them and stuff like that.

The clients that take the initiative and give us information, that actually saves a lot of time and has a better product. We try to make that as easy as possible for the clients. We try to leverage technology, use collaborative documents to be able to do that. When I started practicing, we used to hand people paper documents and tell them to fill it out and bring it back in. Obviously, that’s not something that we’re doing these days, at least not on this firm. We want to be working with the clients, getting all the information that we can.

The other thing that we’re going to be doing right off the bat is figuring out the best mode of communicating with clients. Every single client’s different, everybody has their different way of communicating. We need to make sure in this firm at least, that we have an open conduit of information and communication with the client. What does that look like, right? Internally in this law firm, we use Slack to communicate.

For those that aren’t familiar with Slack, it’s pretty easy to Google, but it’s essentially an interoffice communication tool that we use. A lot of people use Slack in their work or they use Microsoft Teams or something like that, but not only do we communicate internally via Slack, but we give the clients the option of joining an external Slack channel so they can communicate with their team via Slack if they want to.

Some clients, that’s how they like to talk to me or they like to talk to the associate on the case is on Slack. That’s how they like to share documents. Some people prefer text messages, some people prefer Zoom meetings, some people prefer coming in. It all depends, but I think figuring out one, providing all those options to the client and figuring that out right off the bat is almost, in my opinion, almost as essential as all the information we’re going to be getting from the client.

Brian on that, again, thinking about day one, you dumped all this homework on a client, the client’s going to receive that, that’s going to be overwhelming, but obviously the client’s going to want to be thinking on day one, “I just paid these people a lot of money, when am I going to hear from them next? What next am I going to see in my case?” What’s your approach to communication and communication expectations for the client?

Brian Walters: In any case that I’m working on, I suspect it’s the same with you, they all have my mobile number so they can text me, or generally calling out of the blue is not a good idea, but text me in the, “Hey, when can we talk?” They have my email and like you said, Slack if they want to. We reach out to people as soon as they retain us. That’s a pretty simple process, they just sign and pay the retainer.

They immediately get a notification from us, “Thank you for hiring us. Our legal team will be with you shortly.” Generally speaking, let’s say I’m handling the case with an associate attorney, we’re going to have a text or an email out to them within an hour typically of, “All right, we’re on it. Here’s what we understand you need to do, but let’s talk and confirm it.”

We generally then get right back on the phone or Zoom or something like that, sometimes in-person and get into case planning and strategy so that we can confirm what we need to do and how quickly we do it, ’cause sometimes that can change, right? I mean, I could have done a consult a month ago and nothing was happening, it was no rush. Then suddenly someone gets served with papers out of the blue and now they need to rush things.

I need to know that so that we can act appropriately. That’s typically our next step is to reach out, make sure we confirm communication and what the best way of communication is. Some people prefer text, some people prefer email, whatever. Some people have also changed their emails or text numbers because of privacy reasons. Then we start talking about what needs to be done right away on day one.

Again, sometimes that’s not much, like, “Hey, I’m going to file, but not until after the holidays, but I just wanted to get you guys on retainer.” Other ones, it’s a fire drill, we have a hearing the next day or in two or three days. It can really vary.

Jake Gilbreath: I think that’s a good point though as far as the initial conversation goes, like, “What are we doing next?” Because I’ve talked to a lot of people that we’re their second lawyers, or one of the most frustrating things that they experienced at the law firm, and I’ve experienced this myself, you hire a lawyer, you pay a retainer and then you don’t hear from them for days.

“I will set up a meeting with you for next week or something like that.” That’s incredibly frustrating, but the other thing that’s frustrating too is, and we’ve talked about this in other podcasts, if you hire them, you pay a retainer or maybe you get some communication, but you don’t see anything coming out of their office for days or weeks or what have you. Sometimes it’s important to reach out to the client to make sure we are filing something if that’s what they want.

Sometimes it is, “Hey, I’m going to retain y’all, but don’t file anything,” but 99 out of 100 times or at least 90 out of 100 times we’re being retained and we’re moving forward. We’re filing the divorce petition or you’ve been served, so we’re filing an answer and a counterpetition, or you’re switching lawyers and so we’re going to be filing a notice of appearance and a motion to substitute. It’s frustrating if you hire a lawyer to do that and you don’t see it happen in pretty short order.

That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be the exact same day. If you hire us after hours, we’re not going to make an associate come into the office and do it that day, but it needs to be the next day then. If you hire us in the morning, you’re probably going to see something going out in the afternoon on your case. Sometimes that’s not even a legal necessity for something to be filed the same day, but my experience is emotionally that’s something that you want to see.

If you’ve got served with a divorce petition or you’ve been served with something that’s urgent, even if you technically have more time to file a response, it is emotionally impactful to have something coming out and saying, “Hey, we’re this person’s lawyer, we’ve got it. We’re taking care of it.” I think it sends a good message to the client that we’re on the ball, we’re actually going to be responsive.

It’s not going to be the unfortunately stereotypical situation where you hire a lawyer, you’re paying a bunch of money and then you spend half your time wondering where he or she is and what they’re doing. That goes back to that communication piece though. The reason why we have these open lines of communication is because you need to know what’s going on.

I had a client who ended up hiring us yesterday, but she had done multiple consults with other law firms and she asked at the end of the consult, “Are you going to mind if I send you a lot of questions to answer?” She basically wanted to be an open book with me and say, “Just so you know, I’m going to have a lot of questions. Is that okay if I ask you a bunch of questions throughout this process?” It was an interesting question, because I think she had been told by other lawyers, “I’m just going to handle this and we were going to be her second lawyer.”

I’m just going to handle this, so you’re not allowed to ask questions or you asked a question, you’re not going to answer me for three or four days. That’s just not how we see the world. I told her it’s like for me, I think there’s different approaches that you could take in these situations. Like going to a doctor, I could sit there with the doctor and say whatever he or she says, I’m just going to do, I’m not going to have any questions and that’s fine, or I may want to ask the doctor a lot of questions, particularly if it has to do with me or my child.

Ask a lot of questions so I can understand the process. Maybe not as well as the doctor does, but I can understand the process. I can understand the decisions that I’m making and frankly I’m trying to understand if this person knows what they’re talking about. You can’t do that unless you’re communicating and asking questions to get your responses. If you’re asking your lawyer questions and not getting a response for three or four days, are they just refusing to flat out answer questions?

That’s not the type of relationship that you want to have. Looping it all back to what Brian was saying, day one, you need to be hearing from your lawyer, you need to see work done. It sets the tone with the relationship with your own lawyer, it sets the tone with the other side. I guess Brian, on that end, so are you typically, as far as communication with opposing counsel, how is that typically handled if say you’re getting a new lawyer on a case or there’s sometimes been filed on the other side, how do you typically handle that?

Brian Walters: I think that’s really important to have an open communication with opposing counsel because the best outcomes for a client are typically going to be agreements. I mean by definition, if you’re agreeing to it, you’re okay with it. Obviously, there are cases where you’re not going to reach agreement, but those are pretty few and far between.” I usually write the other lawyer right away, “Hey, I’m on the case now whether I’m the second lawyer or the first lawyer or whatever the situation is.

I’m available. Here’s what I think is happening and here’s what I think needs to be done, one, two, three, four. Let me know if you agree or whatever’s going on.” I try to be neutral in that communication because I think that serves a client well to have good open professional communication between the lawyers. I have the same experience that many of our clients who hire us as the second lawyer have, which is I get no response or four days later I get a response, or I get a non-responsive response or a hostile response.

It doesn’t really have anything to do with anything. I figure, “Well, I’ve tried, I’ve done my best, but sometimes that doesn’t do anybody any good.” It really just depends on the other person.

Jake Gilbreath: It’s like you say it is important and sometimes it’s surprising to clients that, but you want your lawyer having a good working relationship with the other lawyer because like you’re saying, hopefully we’re working things out and even if we’re not working things out, what you want to be paying for is lawyers litigating your dispute, not having personal problems with each other and they can’t effectively communicate and move the ball forward.

I had a meeting just this morning where we may or may not in this case have a huge dispute about a particular asset in the case and there’s multiple lawyers on both sides, but we all had a joint meeting. We said, “We need to have this meeting because either we’re going to work it out and so we need to have the meeting so we can work it out. If we’re not going to work it out, we need to all collaborate together on deadlines and exchange documents and do everything that we need to do to litigate this as efficiently as possible.

It’s not efficient to sit there and scream and yell at each other or refuse to call each other back or like you were saying, Brian, have some hostile response right off the bat. It’s not helpful. The worst of all those is just not responding at all or not reaching out to opposing counsel at all. That’s also something that I think happens probably on day one as well. It’s not typical. I think for both of us, Brian, since we have most of the time we’re going to know the lawyers that are on the other side of the case.

It’s not atypical for us to sign, have a case if we’re being second lawyer on it or filing a response or whatever. There’s already a lawyer on the other side that we file something right of way and then just shoot a text to the lawyer on the other side, “Hey, I’m on the Smith case, give me a call. Let’s talk about it.” That’s a pretty routine thing, at least in our office. I know it’s the same for the lawyers that work for us.

Let’s talk about billing because that’s obviously something that I know we talk about in the consult and it’s in our contracts, but people want to be thinking about that day one, right? We’re working day one, it’ll be charged for the work that we do, that’s how it works. What do clients expect for billing and invoices, Brian?

Brian Walters: A good question and it’s been a learning experience for me. It’s somewhat counterintuitive, but we’ve learned that people actually like getting frequent bills. I originally thought, “Let’s not bug them. Let’s not send them a bill very often, maybe once a month and maybe even less often than that if there’s not a lot of billing going on. We’ve learned pretty quickly that based on the feedback from our clients that they would like to know frequently where they stand.

I mean it’s a big expense and I think it’s better to get a couple of smaller bills than it is to get one big one out of the blue. We sent out bills twice a month and so that’s typically toward the beginning of the month and toward the end, but not unlike the first or last day of the month. I know people have rent or mortgage payments these days, so we try to put it a little bit different than that. They’re clear, they’re in writing, they’re sent by email.

We also have made our software a very specific customization that puts it into plain English because I’ll just tell everybody I know we’ve had some podcasts about this, but trust accounting is confusing and that’s the way we keep track of funds and get paid. It’s very confusing. We put it into plain English, here’s what you owe and here’s a button to pay it. Now here in plain English behind it is the explanation of how we got there.

Then attached to it are all the details that it says the same thing, but I would say in a less clear way. That’s how we do things and people seem happy with it. Depending on when you hire us, you could get a bill on the first day that you hired us, which I guess could be a little surprising, but it happens or as long as two weeks after you’ve hired us, depending on how everything falls. Either way, you will get a first bill very quickly and you’ll know exactly where you stand.

My experience also is that it’s important to have a discussion about that first bill. We try to do that before the first bill goes out and say, “Here’s what’s going to happen, what you can expect.” Once it does go out, I like to follow up and say, “Hey, did you understand it? Did you get it? Make sure we have the right email address or it didn’t go to spam. Do you understand how it works? Because a lot of times we get that like, “Wait, I paid a retainer. Why am I getting a bill for more?”

We have to explain how it works. Then people are like, “Okay, I understand, but it’s counterintuitive.” It takes some work on our end, but it also takes a little bit of work on the client’s end. I think if they’re confused or unhappy about a bill, they shouldn’t just pout or refuse to pay it. I think they should just have an adult conversation and say things like, “I don’t understand this, or why did this happen? Why is this line item on here? Is this correct?” Adults will figure it out and it’ll be fine and we will get on down the road, but if one side or the other just refuses to discuss any issues, it’s generally not good.

Jake Gilbreath: All goes back to communication. Unfortunately, the fact that a lot of law firms, I think I’ve talked to a lot of people that have the experience that they’re being represented for months and then maybe they’ll get a bill out of the blue, “Here’s your bill for the last four months, pay it now. Don’t worry, everything in there is accurate and I’m not willing to discuss it.” That’s unfortunately I think a more common experience than it should be that people have.

Like you said, Brian, we’re very, very open and I know we talk about this in the consult too, but we’re very, very open about what we charge, what we’re doing, and people need to see that work because they’re paying for it.

Brian Walters: Yeah, I agree. Here’s another question from clients. We get these sometimes, so we’re putting them on the end of this podcast. How long does the average divorce take from start to finish? I bet you’re going to tell me it depends, but you want to tell me or tell the audience sort of what the major factors are that affect the length of those things?

Jake Gilbreath: It’s not really an average divorce and conflict obviously matters for how much are we fighting? Is it resolved in a mediation? How are both law firms paying attention to it? I try to walk people through, if you think gold standard, let’s say we have good law firms on both sides that are communicating, right? I can control what happens at our end. I can’t necessarily control what happens on the other end.

If you have law firms that are working at it and actually paying attention to it, I usually tell people, let’s say if you have a divorce with kids, and maybe there’s some conflict, but not a lot, but we need to get everybody moved out of the house and figure out a process and schedule that can take a month or two depending on your jurisdiction. Hopefully, we’re not going to court to work out those temporary orders, but we could spend a few weeks just trying to figure out where the ground rules are.

Then we could spend more time if we’re going to do an exchange of documents that can take a month or two or even three, depending on how complex the documents are. Then after people are done exchanging documents, hopefully we’re going to mediation and settling. If you have a case with maybe some, let’s say a divorce with kids with some conflict, maybe some back and forth, minor butting of heads, and then we go to mediation, I think six months is not an unrealistic timeframe for a moderate case to last.

Frankly, with the exchange of information and schedules and everything, it’s rare that they take shorter than that, really in all jurisdictions. That’s even with everybody paying attention to it, you’re in that four to six month range. People are butting heads, they can’t agree on things, they’re going to hearings, stuff like that. Then you’ll spend that six months to a year in a divorce. Then obviously more conflict, more complex cases can easily last more than a year.

This depends on jurisdiction too, if you’re having to involve the court system, some court systems just move slower than others, so it’s very jurisdiction specific. I would say a moderate divorce or child custody case takes between that four to six, maybe a little more month range. More conflict typically means more time. Of course you layer on top of that, if there’s any evaluations going on, there’s a business valuation going on. If there’s a child custody valuation going on, a lot of times you’re sitting around waiting for the professional.

It’s important that you get moving on all that stuff as soon as you can because that may be what you’re waiting for. It’s important, I think that you’re moving the case forward, consistently assuming that things are going to take time. What you don’t want to do is you find out that maybe your lawyer’s just working on one aspect of the case like temporary orders, but then haven’t done anything on discovery because they were focused just on temporary orders.

Well, now we’re having to turn to the discovery and we’re months in and we haven’t even started. You can do a lot of these things at the same time and that’ll impact how long the case takes. That’s a long way of saying it depends. It depends, but those should be your averages and it should be a conversation that you should have.

Brian Walters: I agree. One other factor I’ve seen, or at least maybe I’ve noticed it more recently, is that do both of these people in the marriage want to get divorced or there’s only one? If somebody wants to drag their feet because either they don’t want to be divorced or they just want the opposite of whatever the other side wants or whatever maybe there’s, unfortunately with our system, there are some incentives to drag it out.

In that case, it will take longer versus when both parties are like, “Okay, we’re going to get divorced, let’s get through this quickly.” I think that helps, but you’re right, I think you’ve laid it out exactly correctly. All right, one last question we have from our audience is, I think you can give us a short answer on this one, Jake is, “Can I use a joint account like say a joint checking account that I share with my spouse for paying retainer fees and invoices to your firm?”

Jake Gilbreath: I was going to say, just say yes and put a period on it. Let me give a little more lawyerly answer. Yes, unless there’s a court order prohibiting you otherwise from doing that, which I don’t think, I can’t imagine a scenario where maybe a judge would’ve segregated an account saying this is just for ex-use or whatever. I don’t know. Yes, unless there’s a court order, otherwise.

Brian Walters: For most, for a retainer fee, which is when we’re first hired and in that case if you haven’t been served with papers then, there wouldn’t be a court order. I think that’s certainly fine. I think you need to use some common sense if it’s a very large retainer and that’s going to clear out the entire joint account and that’s your only liquid assets might not be the best idea, but talk about it with your lawyer and they’ll be happy to give you good advice about that. I think the answer is yes in almost all cases.

Well, that’s all we have for today. If you like what you hear today, do us a favor and leave a review. We appreciate all the feedback, especially when it helps us better the podcast. If you have any questions or are interested in speaking with us about your divorce or family law matter, you can reach out to us at podcast@waltersgilbreath.com or www.waltersgilbreath.com. I’m Brian Walters, joined by Jake Gilbreath. Thank you very much for listening.