Unless, of course, we have a scheduled call. If you spent a day with my phone line you would know why. Feel free to leave a voicemail and I will get back to you as soon as I can. But if you are looking to set up a consultation, I need your name, the other party’s name, and your email address.

I cannot speak with you if I have a conflict, and you would be surprised how small Oregon is and I will not take that risk (which is a good thing if you are my client and the other party reaches out to me). So while I appreciate a mysterious voicemail, if you want me to get back to you, you need to provide me that basic information.

I don’t always work traditional hours or days, and I am not sitting at a desk with volumes of legal books behind me. I don’t have staff doing the administrative work or digging through your documents. I do it all, which has huge perks: I am not spending time reviewing anyone else’s work, waiting for someone else to get drafts to me, or playing the game of telephone on various issues. I work out of my home office, my physical office in NE Portland, and wherever life take me. I work daylight hours some days, late at night when the world is quiet on other days when life has been too busy, and long weekends when I need to catch up.

Like you, I am human. And a large part of why I work for myself and run my own practice is because I am a working parent with small humans that need a lot from me. It’s typically food, but sometimes other things that don’t involve me staring at my phone or computer. So when I’m “Parent on Duty” in my household, that’s my focus. But the flip of that is that when I am not the POD in my household and when I am in work mode, I am all in.

A lot of the time I can be more efficient and faster at what I do using technology. While we will use the phones to discuss questions and strategy, I use email to schedule those calls and touch base regularly, and other online platforms to move your case along without you having to drive to my office all the time, unless you want to. I also won’t be mailing you hard copies of everything unless I am required to for that document by local rules or statute. The exception is, of course, if you want me to. So if you are not one to use email, let’s talk about that in advance to make sure that you and I can communicate effectively and are on the same page.

Not every client is a right match for me. If you are, you will know it. If you are reading this thinking that you want a more traditional lawyer, then you should absolutely set up a consultation with one! The great thing about family law lawyers is that like you, there are a lot of different types of us, and you need to find the right one for you.

If you look around you will find that I charge at, or below, market rate. I can do that because I don’t have to pay for staff, I keep my office expenses reasonable, and I use the set time I have every day to do billable work, not work for free. If I offered free consults or answered the phone to talk with every person that calls (every day) looking for family law advice, I would have to increase my rate to my paying clients. So I don’t.

My consultations aren’t just about me listening, instead they are an opportunity to talk about your specific facts, how I think the law would apply, and to answer your questions. The majority of those that have consultations end up retaining me, which means that the consultation is essentially our first meeting and we have already knocked out the background of your case and what our strategy will be. I can even start drafting documents during our consultation. It really is an invaluable time where we get to work. I will look back on the notes from that consultation throughout the entire case. And for those that do not need to retain me, I am able to send them out the door with resources to handle this on your own without me.

I love family law. I enjoy working through the complex issues of the mess we live in. But in order to do that and carry the emotional load of family law I have set healthy boundaries with my work and family life, and I hope that you are able to do that too.