On this Episode
Zach is joined by Beth from the Pro Legal Care LLC office, and they discuss how difficult it is to accurately help people who have “just one quick question” about their case – the theme of our entire podcast.
Episode Transcript
Zach Townsend
I’m Zach Townsend. I’m a family law lawyer in Illinois and Wisconsin. You’ve got just one quick question. Let’s get you some quick answers.
I have with me here today, Beth Wagner from my office.
Beth
Also known as your wife. Did you think about possibly titling your podcast, “Divorce Chat with My Wife?”
Zach Townsend
Nope.
Beth
No?
So being Beth from the office means that I get to talk to a lot of people on the phone every day who have just one quick question. I would guess that 50 % of the people that call in to our office start their phone call with, I’ve got just one quick question if I could talk to the attorney real quick.
Zach Townsend
I get it all the time. People will walk up to me or as soon as I find out that I’m an attorney, they’ll say, I’ve got a question for you. Just a quick question. One quick question. Or I’ll get people that I forgot existed from high school that send me a Facebook message. Hey, I’ve got a legal question. Can you help me out? Or a family member. People think that it’s just as simple as that.
Beth
And the problem is that we wish we could answer all of these quick questions. We wish we could give them quick and easy answers. The stereotype that we always joke about with lawyers is that the answer to every question is, it depends. It depends, it depends, it depends. So.
Zach Townsend
That’s what every lawyer says. Yeah, that’s one of the reasons
that people get so frustrated in trying to figure out legal solutions because it depends.
Beth
So what kinds of things does it depend on in family law and divorce law? Why can’t we just answer one quick question as easily as it seems like it would be to people?
Zach Townsend
Good question. So the way that the law works often is they have a rule and then an exception to the rule and then an exception to the exception of the rule and then an exception to the exception to the exception of the rule. And it just goes on like that. And that’s for every rule. And as you can imagine, there are a lot of rules in the law. So it ends up being a very layered, very layered. So for example, if you have just one quick question about
your divorce case, it’s very much going to depend on where your divorce case is at, what county it’s in, even what judge it’s assigned to within that county, whether the case has even started yet, whether it’s a short-term marriage or a long-term marriage, whether there’s a history of domestic violence, whether there’s an active order of protection, whether there are children involved. There are all kinds, there are a thousand other examples I can give you of where
one of these factors could tilt the scales or influence things because often what happens in the law, they’ve got what’s called a balancing test, well, there’ll be a variety of factors that are weighed. And sometimes they refer to it as the totality of the circumstances. And so,
Beth
That’s
around our office. That’s where we talk about the vibes being off. When Attorney Townsend is talking about the totality of the circumstances, the rest of us are talking about how the vibes are off.
Zach Townsend
Right, and imagine if judges get to go by vibes. Well, they don’t exactly, but if every relevant circumstance matters, then sometimes it kind of feels that way.
Beth
I think the vibes
is an important thing to think about with the location and the judge though, because I talk to people every day on the phone who say, well, I’m in Southern Illinois and Illinois law is Illinois law. So any question that I have would apply here in Southern Illinois, just the same as it does in the Rockford area or in the Freeport area.
Zach Townsend
That’s just not true. That’s just not
true. Everything is localized. There are 102 counties in Illinois. We’re licensed to practice in every single one of them, but they’re all different. And when you’re in…
Beth
And I’ve heard
you say to potential clients on the phone, you know, I’m sitting in my office and looking out the window, I can see the Winnebago County courthouse across the street. I’ve practiced in front of these judges for over a decade. I practiced with some of these judges when they were attorneys. And I think that that is a really, really important part of the vibe.
Zach Townsend
Yeah, it’s my stomping ground. When I look out and see it out the window, it feels like my own backyard. It practically is. I know my way around the courtroom so well because I’ve been there so often. But if I were to go to a county down in southern Illinois, I might be like a fish out of water. It’s actually in the law called a foreign county, even though it’s still within the same
state, let alone the same country, they call a different county in Illinois, say like Winnebago County down to Cook County would be a foreign county. That’s how different it is. And that’s part of the situation with answering a question why it’s not necessarily just one quick question, because it’s localized. It depends on the community customs. It depends on the norms. It depends on
the practices and the institutional knowledge, if you will, which is something that, you know, usually isn’t written down. But there are also written rules. They call them local rules. And the counties or the circuits that the counties are in, and our judicial circuits in Illinois have rules that have the force and effect of law, but they are for that particular court. And the same is true for Wisconsin. And yes, we’re licensed to practice in all 72 counties in Wisconsin.
But there are those that we’re a lot more familiar with, like Green County and Rock County, Milwaukee County. But once you get further up north, that’s a little bit of a different animal.
Beth
So outside of the location, what are the things that change your answer to a question related to a specific judge? Let’s say that I’ve got two folks who have the exact same, just a quick question, but they’re in front of two different judges. What kind of behaviors or opinions or, you know, history with the judges would change your answer to the same question?
Zach Townsend
Sure. Well, new judges sometimes don’t have histories, so it’s more like a clean slate. So that’s something to consider and to worry about. There are some judges that say, for example, if there are kids involved, that’s another way that my answer to your question might change if there are kids involved. Some judges say, I start with the presumption that there’s going to be 50-50 parenting time between
both parents, and until I get a good reason otherwise, that’s probably what I’ll do. And so if that’s your judge, my answer is going to be very different than if we’re dealing with a judge that’s stuck in the old days of where you have your every other weekend dad, and then you have your mom with custody, and that’s the way that the same mold goes in each case, and that’s the starting point and often where it ends. That’s called a judge’s predilection, or a judge’s preference or leaning. And so,
the way that they interpret the law and the way that they perhaps try to apply the law, that’s going to be something that also changes the outcome of the case, your goals, what your goals are in the case and what you’re looking to get out of it and what you consider to be a fair outcome. That’s also going to change the answer to my question as well.
Beth
How is your answer going to change if we have a guardian ad litem involved or depending on the specific guardian ad litem and how long they’ve been on the case?
Zach Townsend
Yes, the longer that the guardian ad litem has been on the case, the more weight that they’re going to carry normally and the more that they’re going to have an opinion that’s already fully formed and not to be changed, quite frankly, just to be blunt. So that’s going to be a factor. Whether or not the judge on the case, excuse me, whether or not the judge on the case is the type of judge that will be happy to go off and deviate from the guardian ad litem’s recommendation, or whether the judge that’s been assigned to your case is just known to follow in lockstep with the guardian ad litem’s recommendation to maybe not even ever second guess the guardian ad litem’s recommendation, which in that event would cause the guardian ad litem to carry a lot of weight and a lot of authority and have the judge be sort of.
Not the one making the decisions as much as the guardian ad litem even. So the judge’s way of using or how much the judge leans on the guardian ad litem or relies on them is going to be a factor in how I would answer your question as well. But also with your guardian ad litem having a weight, like big influence in your case.
how they see things, just like I said earlier about the judges. Are they thinking that equal parenting time is the way to start when you have two parents, or are they thinking that there needs to be a home base and maybe that every other weekend traditional old time conventional mold is where that particular guardian ad litem starts? Is the guardian ad litem insensitive to abuse and only sees abuse as, if it’s physical abuse, because non-physical abuse doesn’t exist according to this person’s maybe perspective.
the types of preferences and leanings and dispositions or the way that their outlook is, their worldview, all of that. And we get to know that over time when we go to the same county courthouses over and over, Winnebago County, Stephenson County, Boone County, Ogle County, we really get to know those people so well. So that’s going to also affect the answer to the question because…
our knowledge about the way those people lean, those people that have lot of influence in your case, that’s going to affect the way I answer your question too.
Beth
When you are first meeting with someone new, when you’re first talking to someone new, you’ve never been involved in their case before, you’re doing a consultation with them, you’re trying to answer just one quick question for them, what is the industry that that’s most similar to?
Zach Townsend
That’s a good question. Usually you’ll get the doctor comparison because the doctor can’t just tell you what’s wrong with you without doing a screening or urinalysis or a blood workup or some kind of imaging or something like that to try to figure out what’s going on. So that’s the most often comparison I hear, but another really good one is auto mechanic. And if you think about it,
Hey, I’ve got just one quick question. It’s sort of like pulling your car up to the auto mechanic shop and saying, I need you tell me what’s wrong with my car. It’s making a weird noise. Well, of course, they’ve got to bring it in. They’ve got to look under the hood. They’ve got to figure out what’s going on by checking out the different parts and symptoms of the problem so they could diagnose it. So we’re a lot like that. And that is important in the sense that
we want our clients to know what’s going on and we want to educate them and we want them to be able to have the information that they need to make an informed decision. I mean, it sounds pretty simple and it is, but it’s something that’s sometimes so obvious that it’s overlooked sometimes that you’ve got to have the information to make the decision. The client’s the one making the decision. And in the same kind of way, you want your mechanic to be able to say, hey, this is what’s wrong and here are your options. I know what your goal is.
Here are the options to help you get you there. You could decide which option is best for you based on my guidance. And so we want to make sure that you understand what’s going on. And that’s another good analogy that I’ve found because it takes a special type of training.
Beth
Honestly, urinalysis
conversation is not that completely out of left field for us as well, because sometimes their one quick question is, is the judge actually allowed to order a drug test for me or an alcohol test for me? So while I wish that urinalysis never entered our cases, sometimes it does.
Zach Townsend
Yeah. And one of the reasons that it might be hard to just give a quick answer is because you have the right to decline if you don’t want to take the drug test, but you might get your kids taken away. So you don’t really have the right to decline is the way it ultimately feels at the end of the day. So what the choices are, what you can do, and then what your consequences are for each of the courses of action is part of what we want to make sure that you have all the information on.
Beth
you
How does your answer to someone’s quick question change based on whether or not they currently have an attorney or whether they’ve had an attorney throughout the process of their case so far?
Zach Townsend
That’s a good question. Sometimes the judges will notice when there’s a lot of attorneys representing one person and they’ll start to wonder why. Sometimes if a client has had a previous attorney or has a current attorney, especially if it’s a current attorney, I’ll usually say the person that’s working on your case that has spent all this time and that knows your case really well,
better than I do because just one quick question is really almost a myth. And that person that’s invested so much into your case and maybe has given you advice that you don’t like or that you don’t want to hear, maybe unfortunately has a good grasp on the realistic nature of your outcome in pursuing
tangible remedies that the court is able to award to you. maybe that’s the expert that you should rely on. And we have a pretty dysfunctional court system sometimes. And so you might think, well, the lawyer is the issue here. And maybe it’s a part of a different component of the dysfunction of the system. And that’s a hard pill to swallow sometimes.
On the other hand, if you have an attorney and they’re not being responsive to you, they’re not trying to advance your goals. They’re not keeping you informed or making sure that you understand what you need to know to be able to make good and informed decisions and to know what’s going on and to know what you’re paying for. Well, then it might be a good idea to change attorneys, but
I’m definitely going to be more cautious if somebody has an attorney and they’re looking for another opinion because the person who is probably in the best position to give that advice has already provided it. And perhaps that’s not what they wanted to hear.
Beth
That makes a lot of sense. So probably the biggest frustration that people have on the phone with office staff is that we can’t just transfer a call directly to you. They have a question, they want an answer, they don’t want to waste time scheduling an appointment, they don’t want to have to give us a bunch of information about themselves, they don’t want to have to fill out.
an intake form, they don’t want to have to go on the calendar at your next availability. What is the plain and simple reason that we cannot just transfer a phone call to you?
Zach Townsend
Well, we’re very popular and we have a lot of people that call us every single day and we have paying clients that we represent first and that we prioritize. Those are the people that I’m going to be spending most of my time addressing and advising and providing guidance and walking them through their questions and helping them accomplish their goals. And that’s just matter of fact why I can’t just take each call where someone wants to
bounce a quick question off me.
Beth
I’m sure that the people who have a case active in court are standing in front of the judge right now would be real unhappy, as well as the judge being real unhappy if you stepped out to the hallway to take a real quick question from the guy who’s yelling at us on the phone.
Zach Townsend
Right. And it can be very frustrating. And that’s part of where these interactions come in. It’s where it really should just be one quick question. it’s maybe not, maybe it says something bad about the state of our justice system that there’s not a quick answer, that it always depends, that it should be.
something attainable. should be something that we could figure out, frankly sometimes it’s just not.
Beth
I think that people really underestimate what the question that they are actually asking is. Because when I have someone on the phone who says, well, what does a case management conference mean? What they’re really asking is, do I need to take off work? Do I need to be there in person? Can this be done over Zoom? What is going to be?
Zach Townsend
Yeah, what is the
judge going to do at that time? What can I expect?
Beth
What does this mean for
me and my family? What do I need to do ahead of time? Do I need to hire an attorney or is this something I can do by myself? Are my kids supposed to come? Are my witnesses supposed to come? Should I have, you know, letters or evidence or exhibits or, you know, it’s, it’s the one quick question is always actually like this layer that gets down to a fear.
a fear for your property, fear for losing your house, a fear for losing your retirement account that you worked your whole life for, a fear that you’re not gonna get as much time with your children as you hoped you would get. And so as we chip away at the layers of just one quick question, it’s never actually, you know, what does a case management order mean? What is a case management conference? What is a pretrial conference? How do I file my exhibits?
Those are things that actually are the surface of what the real question is.
Zach Townsend
Right, right. And so how lawyers normally would describe that is that a person is seeking information upon which they can rely. A person is seeking information that they could know to be true, they can count on it, and they could use it as their basis to take another course of action. And that’s exactly what you’re talking about because it’s almost as if
The question is in a vacuum. And there is no question that has no surrounding context. Because especially for a lawyer,
Beth
There’s even questions
that we get on the phones that seem simple. when I first started working here, there’s questions that I thought I could easily answer and help people out. And everyone here has this desire to help. That’s why we’re in the job. And so someone would call.
Zach Townsend
That’s one of reasons
that makes it so tough because when someone just has a quick question and we feel like it should be a quick answer and we want to help, we want to tell them, well, here are the steps. But it comes with all these assumptions and all these basically, okay, a premise that might be false because there are factors that the system, whatever that means, the judge, the guardian ad litem, the courts, whomever is going to decide or influence this,
considers to be an important factor, relevant, maybe something that could even change the course of the decision or the outcome of the case. And if I don’t know about it, then I can’t properly inform you or advise you on it.
Beth
And that’s where things like as basic as when is my next court date or what courtroom is that in or do I have court in the future? We can’t even answer those things even though the docket in most counties is publicly visible and we can see it. I don’t necessarily know that the person on the phone and I are talking about the same case. So if I tell them that their next court date is February 3rd, but they actually have four cases and they have a court date that’s up on January 31st, then
when they miss court. It’s kinda my fault.
Zach Townsend
Or if the clerk of the court, the court itself changes the date and what you were looking at was accurate at the time. then a couple of days later, the court changes because that happens sometimes. They’ll even change judges. You might call and say, who’s my judge? You could see on the access to the docket that we have, there’s a judge assigned. Then the next day it might be changed because things change. Circumstances change.
We don’t have the ability to call you up and say, it’s not that judge anymore. Hey, it’s actually a different court date or hey, you might have another case. Now, if you’re our client, we’re already well versed on your circumstances and your situation. And of course we could help you through all that. But that’s where it’s not just one quick question.
Beth
And when someone is your client, you have a duty to them. And that gets us into some of the reasons we can’t just transfer a random caller to you on the telephone to answer just one quick question, because you have attorney-client relationships to protect, which means that we have to figure out who we have on the phone. We have to figure out what cases they’ve had with other people and whether you’ve ever represented those other people. We have to figure out, we have to make sure that they are…
in an area that you’re licensed to practice in, in a county that you work in. And that’s why we’re looking at scheduling a consultation in the future, even if it’s just a couple hours in the future. In those couple of hours, your office is gathering that information from the docket. We’re having the potential client fill out intake forms that tell us more about themselves and about their spouses and their children and their ex-spouses and…
their current boyfriend, things like that that help us make sure that we are protecting the attorney-client relationships for you.
Zach Townsend
That’s right. That’s part
of prioritizing the client. And that’s part of the process that we have that we go through when we decide who, what clients we’re going to take, what cases we’re going to take, what people we’re going to help to make sure that we have all the information to make sure that we are not doing a disservice to the people that we already represent. Because as Beth said, we have an obligation. We have a
duties above and beyond any other duties that are special and apply only to lawyers vis-a-vis their clients. And one of those duties is known as the duty of loyalty. So every client that I represent, I have a duty of loyalty toward them. And that’s part of the requirements as mandated and provided and required by law, required by Illinois law.
required by Wisconsin law, required by every state in the United States, there is a duty of loyalty. And what that requires in order to protect the client is to make sure that we’re not coming in on a case where our client is not viewed favorably. We don’t want to represent somebody that says a different client that you have Attorney Townsend is a bad influence on.
my kids or is causing trouble at my home or any other issue where they’re an adverse party, which means adverse party means the bad guy. If that person is someone that we previously represented, then we have a duty of loyalty and we take that duty of loyalty very seriously. And that’s part of the reason why
It’s not just, you want to speak to Attorney Townsend and let me just go ahead and transfer you. It’s also part of the reason why we engage in what’s called a conflict check. A conflict check is a search that the lawyer is required to conduct before deciding to take on a case or to hire or to give advice to a client to see if the people that are involved in that case.
have ever been involved in the case, any other cases or matters on which I’ve previously been involved? Might even be representing a third party or a parent of somebody or somebody’s new partner or somebody, one of the step parents involved. If I was involved previously, I’m gonna want to know about it. So we have a very thorough search and a very extensive database where we do everything within our power to make sure that we have all the information because
we’re not going to just let somebody who is not on our side or not on our client’s side, one of our clients, any of our clients, and just let them in like they’re cool with us because they’re not if they’re not on our client’s side. And so we may have to decline a case for that reason. And we do.
because we owe it to our clients. It’s our duty and it’s our obligation and we’re loyal to them. And even sometimes it feels like people want to take advantage of that or abuse that.
Beth
Absolutely, absolutely. So I think one of the biggest complications for you is that you’re practicing in Rockford. You have an office in Rockford. And what is Rockford?
Zach Townsend
I would describe it as the biggest small town in the United States.
Beth
It is absolutely the biggest small town you’ve ever been in because when we start running conflict checks and when we start linking together cases that have existed over 20 years even, we start seeing that the witnesses in one case are the parties in a different case and everyone knows everyone and everyone went to high school with everyone. we have to sort those things out in order to best protect our clients and make sure that we are not
putting Attorney Townsend on the phone with someone who is an adverse party to one of our existing clients.
Zach Townsend
Yeah, you would be surprised how many connections there are. And it’s really a shocker, honestly, how everybody knows everything. It feels like everybody’s all up in everybody’s business. And when we collect this information for our clients’ protection, and then we could see the web. honestly, it’s sometimes very revealing, very revealing.
Beth
We love scheduling consultations. We love getting people on the phone with Zach, with you. But we also have to have the cooperation of a potential client to be able to give us that information. Sometimes we have these conversations where they have just one quick question, but they don’t want to give us their name. They don’t want to give us anything about themselves, including their county, their opposing party, what their case number is. And in those sorts of situations,
we’re done, the conversation is over, because I can’t in good conscience put you on the phone with someone that would just conflict you out of being able to help somebody else in the future. So occasionally, occasionally we even have conversations where the vibe is off and you can tell that the person is just trying to get on your schedule so that the other side can’t hire you.
Zach Townsend
Right, right, we just can’t do it.
Beth
How does the court system deal with that when someone calls every attorney in town just to try to keep their opposing party from being able to have any attorney at all?
Zach Townsend
Yeah, well, that’s a good question. Probably wouldn’t make the judge happy. And one of the first things they teach you in law school is you have to keep the judge happy. So that’s one thing where it can become a problem. But it also affects the view of you as a person with credibility or really without credibility. It affects your honesty and it would probably color the judge’s perspective on your other claims.
if you make some kind of assertion or you say that this is best for the kid or that there’s some kind of problem going on in your case and the judge needs to do something about it. If you’ve revealed yourself already as somebody who is dishonest and manipulative and that’s what you would be if you were calling around to just try to…
get in with somebody, get a consultation with an attorney just to conflict out your partner, that would really reflect negatively on you. But that’s why we have the process that we do have to make sure that if that were to happen, I don’t even speak to those people because they’re already declined because
You know, we want to help everybody, but we have to be selective so that way we could use our resources the best for the people that need them most.
Beth
So on the topic of our resources, we’ve already talked about how we concentrate your time on current paying clients. But one of the things that people ask us on the phone is they say things like, well, I don’t want to schedule a consultation. I’m not going to hire an attorney. I’m not going to hire any attorney. I just need some free legal advice. And we have to say, we don’t provide free legal advice. That’s not a service that we offer.
Or they ask for pro bono services. Sometimes folks tell us that every lawyer has to do pro bono services or things like that. Can you explain the difference between a private law firm like we are versus a pro bono resource that gives free services to the community?
Zach Townsend
Yeah, I got that yesterday.
Yes, so a pro bono resource gives services or legal care based on funding that they receive from a not-for-profit source like grants or an endowment or subsidies or fundraising and that’s not how we get our resources. We have our clients and our clients pay us and we are a for-profit enterprise, not a non-profit.
And that’s how we get our resources to provide the care that we provide and the very powerful tools that we have to keep our clients safe and to keep their case organized and expedited hopefully so it can progress through the court system and not be stuck. But the way that we do that and the way that we pay for all of the really great, powerful, high-tech tools that we have to protect our clients is
with paying clients. And so, we are not a not-for-profit. we’re certainly, not required, to do, pro bono or, unpaid, professional legal services, lawyering, representation of a client or legal care, as you might call it. We don’t have to do that as part of a requirement as attorneys, not in the state of Illinois.
know what none of the licensed attorneys to practice in the state of Illinois have to do that. But there is a very common misconception. And like I said when I jumped in, somebody said yesterday, I know you have to take a pro bono, at least one pro bono case a year. And that’s not true. There’s not a requirement for pro bono cases to be taken.
We are Pro Legal Care, but we’re not pro bono. We are for profit.
Beth
So I would split most of the just one quick question questions that we get over the phone into the category of mechanics. How do I do an online filing? What is the name of the motion that I need to file? Those sort of more mechanical questions. The other category is this, I always refer to them as the red flag questions because they’re the questions that
to me indicate that a person really should not be attempting to work this case. Yeah, something has gone really, really wrong if you are asking me this question on the phone. Some examples of that would be like, how do I get the judge removed? How do I get the GAL off of my case? The guardian ad litem is biased towards me. How do I just get her removed completely? Those are the sorts of questions where
Zach Townsend
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, something’s gone wrong.
Beth
How do you encourage someone to get a lawyer even if it’s not us?
Zach Townsend
That’s a good question. So sometimes it’s hard because, just like when you look under the hood of your vehicle and you’re trying to figure out why you hear this ticking noise or why the, the, the rumbling is happening, it’s very hard to figure out unless you have training. It’s very tough. Unless you know what each of the parts do and what they’re for and how they function, in, the way that it works as a whole. so.
there are some examples where I could try to say, look, there is a problem with your case, obviously. And they know that, but one of the situations that becomes well, it makes the problem worse is when they try to
fight the problem through basically a collateral attack. And so what, that’s a lawyer phrase for burn it down. So it’s not gonna work. You have to fight it quote unquote from within. You have to deal with the tools that are available within the court system and not going to the judge’s supervisor. That’s not gonna work.
Just the same way, going to the DCFS, caseworker supervisor, usually doesn’t work. You are going to inflame the situation, potentially make it worse, and get onto some kind of high horse because what somebody did was illegal. And that happens sometimes. People that are trusted to be in a position of authority sometimes do things that are illegal. Doesn’t mean that they…
get arrested or thrown out or that all the decisions now are moot or that they don’t have jurisdiction. There is an authority and a power that even if you don’t respect the authority, you have to respect the power that the authority has.
Beth
So you said something there that I want to circle back on a little bit. Basically, you’re saying it’s not a zero-sum game. If the other side does something wrong in family law, it’s not like the entire case just gets thrown out. This isn’t like a civil lawsuit over money where you can make a mistake where the whole case just goes away forever.
Zach Townsend
Right, right. It’s not like one party wins and the other party loses. That’s not how it goes. And this is part of what we had talked about earlier where it’s not black and white. It’s shades of gray. And it’s part of the totality of the circumstances and the vibes and the changing circumstances. So if there is, like you said, a money judgment, that’s
Beth
The vibes. The vibes.
Zach Townsend
not going to change except for maybe with interest and that’s just math. So all kinds of other cases, a decision is made, that’s the decision. But in family law cases, divorce cases, in custody cases, they are never really fully closed because they’re always subject to being reopened. And when they’re reopened, there are changes that can be made and there are
a lot of moving parts and they aren’t static, they’re fluid and so they’re almost ever changing. They definitely go through seasons of change if they’re not ever changing. So it really is going to depend, it’s really going to be much more difficult, I think, in my opinion, to be able to answer questions, even if it’s just one quick question about something that is
not static or unchanged and staying the same all the time, but constantly growing like a child or a person involved in a custody case. So that child’s not sitting on a shelf while this is pending. That child is being conditioned by their environment and affected by their surroundings and their circumstances. And that includes the opportunity for both parents to
be there and parent the child, love on their child, if it’s healthy and if it’s good and it doesn’t hurt the child, then of course that’s the way that it should be. But how do you make that decision? The best interest of the child, which is like the paramount guiding light for these types of cases, is yet another balancing test where the judge has to go down the list of the factors and decide whether or not they apply and to what extent and how much. And then the very last factor,
is something to the effect of all other relevant factors. So it almost doesn’t end.
Beth
So even though
even the judge is wrapping things up with, well, it depends.
Zach Townsend
Right, and the judge has wide discretion. The judge has a lot of latitude. And so, especially when deciding what happened and deciding the facts, appellate courts don’t change the facts, almost never. So the judge is going to be making that assessment.
Beth
So we have folks tell us all the time, they can’t wait for a consultation. They don’t have time to spend meeting with you, talking on the phone with you to do a consultation. They don’t have time for this. Do you see a difference in outcomes for folks dependent on how long they waited to consult with an attorney and get some good legal advice?
Zach Townsend
A thousand times yes. I can’t tell you how many examples where somebody came to me and they said this is a situation and they know they need help, but they don’t think that they need help now. Or they think they convinced themselves that they just aren’t able to get the help now. Or that they’ll just try it themselves first and if it doesn’t work, then they’ll get the help then. Or maybe they’ll get halfway through it and then they’ll go to the attorney and say,
Got halfway there. just need you to get me the other half of the way there. Well, truth is, it’s probably just a big frickin mess and that it would be better to start with a clean slate instead of having a halfway there case brought to me by somebody who was previously self-represented. So, but even if you don’t intend to take actions and you’re just going to wait and sit tight, I could tell you nine times out of 10, when I have a potential client that’s consulting with me,
their opposing party is off getting advice themselves. They’re getting consultations. They’re trying to ask their one quick question. They’re doing their Google search and researching what their rights are and talking to their friends and family about their experiences and what happened in their particular cases. And that’s another reason why waiting can be a problem, because you don’t know that your other side is
at work kind of doing the same thing that you’re doing. They also might know by your search history or they have access to your email and you don’t know it or the phone bill. And so they could find out or they can just tell. But also, if you have a concern, it normally is not something that you’re just going to say, OK, the first day I see the problem, I’m going to call up a lawyer. No, the first day you’re going to try to figure it out probably without an attorney or
You’re going to maybe not necessarily realize that the problem is at the gravity or the level that it’s at. A lot of times in situations like this, takes confiding in a really close friend or loved one who maybe has gone through a similar situation and maybe they see it before you. And that’s part of your realization of what’s even happening. So you have to consider the fact that when you’re right in the middle of it, sometimes you don’t see it. And sometimes.
it’s worse than you think. And especially when things are up in the air, when things are unsettled, maybe a case hasn’t been filed yet, or maybe there needs to be a case filed, or there needs to be a refiling to reopen an old case because things aren’t working. And they’re probably not just not working for you. They’re probably not working for the other side, the children.
other people involved, other players that are interested in the case basically. So what I can tell you and my advice is that you need to take action. And whether that’s with me as your attorney or with another attorney, you need to take action. And that’s because things can get really bad.
really fast.
And it’s hard to overemphasize that.
Beth
When someone has a consultation with you, when someone has a phone call, meets with you, and they know that their goal is probably not to hire you, whether that’s a financial block that they have that they’re not able to retain you, does the consultation provide information that they can use to help themselves? Like, I guess what I’m saying is, even if they know they can’t hire you right now, today,
Is the consultation still better than, hey, I’ve got just one quick question.
Zach Townsend
Yeah, 100 % because the situation is almost like there are chapters or layers or levels. And so you need to have an understanding of the big picture before you could get into the details and the nitty gritty and minutia of, okay, what are my next actions? And I had mentioned.
There are rules, exceptions to the rules, exceptions to the exceptions, and exceptions to the exceptions, and exceptions to the rules. Before you ever get to that, the general lay of the land, if you even have the right to file, if you even have the right to file in this county, if you even have standing to prevent, for example, the other parent of your child from
moving with the child across country? Do you have standing? Do you have any rights? Are you legally the parent? All of these different foundational questions, lawyers refer to them as threshold questions. These questions are fundamental in the determination of your basic options. So you need to be able to have
some of your basic options set out for you. And that includes legally, even if it’s in a somewhat generic sense, even if it’s in the sense of, okay, think twice before you do that. Or in the sense of, you better hurry up because this is extremely time sensitive. Maybe more time sensitive than you realize. Even if it’s just in the sense of finding an attorney,
that you trust and that you can connect with. Probably the most important part of the attorney-client relationship is trust and good communication. An attorney that you can trust and an attorney that you could have good communication with, that you can get good information from, that’ll return your calls. So the trust and the communication, that’s…
probably the most important part of the attorney-client relationship. you don’t want to be trying to find somebody who you could gel with when everything’s hit the fan. That’s another thing that you can do by having a consultation ahead of time to figure out if you have a connection with somebody who understands you, speaks your language, your attorney that you’re looking to hire, in other words. Because that’s the purpose normally of the consultation is for you to be able to get information about
possibly hiring the attorney in the future. And the reason is because to really be able to get into it and to give you the advice that you need that is the absolute best advice that you could rely on better than any other advice, I need to be able to roll up my sleeves, dig into this and really spend a lot of time and be your attorney and represent you and be able to dive into all of the details and twists and turns and.
moving parts. So that’s the way that you would need to be able to get the best legal advice. But even a consultation, how do you even know where to start with how much money you need to come up with for a retainer? Your consultation is going to be able to tell you that. So there are lots of pieces of basic information that you could learn from a consultation. Even taking that step, because as I said earlier, it’s hard.
It takes courage. genuinely takes strength to be able to tell your personal story to a stranger with these perhaps intimate details or real personal sensitive stuff. So to be able to put yourself into that position, it’s almost like you have to relive what happened if you have to explain it all over again to somebody, especially that
you don’t know that well, so, it’s better to do something and to, get the information that you, can into, maybe at least you’re gathering the details of, knowing what the most important pieces of information are that you need to obtain in the future. And that’s part of the step again, there are layers, there are levels of this.
Beth
How often would you say that you have people consult with you today and then not hire you for months or even years? And when people do consult with you when they’re not sure they’re even going to file for divorce, when they’re not sure they’re even going to leave their spouse, do you feel like they’ve wasted your time with a consultation?
Zach Townsend
So that would be what lawyers refer to as a compound question. no, no, no, that is a basis of an objection, but I’m not objecting. I am just going to need you to repeat the question individually.
Beth
Was that an objection? Are you objecting to my question?
How often do people consult with you now and then not hire you for say six months to a year or more.
Zach Townsend
More often than you would think. I would say that a good number of folks hire us because they are in an emergency situation, but you don’t want to be in an emergency situation when you’re sorting all this out. And so some people, a lot of people, more than you would think, I would say a good 20 % will consult with me and then not hire me for a
at least three to six months later, sometimes a year or two later. So a lot of times it takes a week or two or maybe a month for people to perhaps raise the funds or get a loan or get help from their support system to be able to pay for it. But sometimes the reason is not financial. It’s because they’re not ready yet and they’re not in the position to do it yet.
And oftentimes, whether it’s a divorce or even a custody case, these are life events. These are almost landmarks that signify a completely different direction in your life. So a lot of people understand that there are reasons why
You know, maybe to delay or probably more often what they do is they see the cracks forming and when they see the cracks forming, they’re worried. They may be hoping for some repair, hoping for the best, but they’re planning for the worst. So they get all the information that they can because they’re worried that maybe the change that they’re hoping for in the relationship or in the family dynamic or whatever the situation is.
If it doesn’t happen, then they have somebody. Then they’re ready.
Beth
And you would rather they be ready than wait until, as you said, it hits the fan. Yeah. And so it’s never a waste of your time for someone to schedule a consultation.
Zach Townsend
100%, right. Right. No,
it is not ever. And we want to give preventative medicine. You know, there’s this old cliche that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And that’s really true in the law. And we are problem solvers.
We don’t want to make any problem worse. We want to fix the problem or keep it contained, keep the lid on it, not have it boil over or inflame and get all aggravated. We want it to stay calm and cool. But the best approach and the most successful family cases are when you prevent the problem before the problem happens.
Beth
So our call to action here really is schedule a consultation. Don’t just try to ask one quick question at a time. Spend the time, invest the time, whether it’s with Zach Townsend or whether it’s with any other attorney close to you who practices in your area.
Zach Townsend
Yes, absolutely. Explore all the options that you can. You need to leave, honestly, no stone unturned. You have to put some work into this. You have to be thoughtful about this. Don’t just go with somebody who, you know your friend said they heard of a long time ago or somebody your uncle used or something, especially if it’s not in the same area of law. Might not be the same same time anymore. The laws change. There could be.
lot of different, circumstances that make your case, different or those special circumstances that we had talked about. You want to make sure that you get help, that you have somebody who is an expert, somebody who, focuses on the type of issue that you have and that’s goal oriented is going to help you achieve your goals and get to where you want to be in your family case and help you achieve the outcome that you want because they have the experience that fits.
your case, so consult with an attorney. Even if it’s not me, you need to consult with an attorney. You need to talk to an expert. need to gather all the information that you can because knowledge is power. You need to be able to protect yourself in a situation like this. So there’s a lot of opportunities and make sure that you take those opportunities and, and, and consult with an attorney.
Beth
He may not have quick answers, but he’s always going to have answers. You heard it. Consult with an attorney near you in this area of law. If you’re in northern Illinois or southern Wisconsin and want to schedule a consultation with Zach Townsend, visit us at ProLegalCare.com.
