Law Blog

In my opinion (IMO, to you all people who can’t pry yourself away from the interwebz) a person goes through a number of stages in their life: childhood, adolescence, young adult, middle-aged, then old dude or dudette.  That’s generally how most people see life, too.  But within these stages, there are a bunch of sub-stages that occur, most interestingly between young adult to middle-aged.  I’m in an odd/interesting/sad stage right now.  I’m right around the age where everyone is starting to get married, but also I’m getting closer to the age where I’m starting to know people who are getting divorced.  It’s weird – whatever happened to the stage where we’d all play around in the sandbox and make mudpies?  Oh, childhood, why did we have to leave you?

Anyway… recently, I ran into an old friend, Joey, from high school and we ended up talking about his life since I last saw him.  Joey was a pretty popular kid when we were in school together.  Despite the fact that our school didn’t have very strong sports teams, Joey was a star-player on our school’s basketball team nonetheless, which is why he was also popular among a lot of the female students.  And in our senior year, Joey hooked up with Deborah, a shy, yet nice girl from our school.  Everyone thought they were the cutest couple and that they were headed to good successful places.  So when Joey told me that he was getting divorced, I was shocked.  Even more surprising was when he told me how things between he and Deborah had soured to the point where they were no longer talking and that he was locked in a bitter custody battle with her.

I was shocked, even more shocked than when I discovered the drying power of ShamWow!

Joey wanted to have primary custody of the children.  He told me how other divorced guys he knew all either lost complete custody of their children or were limited only to visitations rights.  Joey didn’t want to keep Deborah from seeing their children.  In fact, he wanted her to be a very active part in their lives.  But what he didn’t want was to become like all the other divorced dads he knew.  He didn’t want to be limited to only visiting his children because he was worried that it’d make his children distant.  He wanted to know what his options were.

Well, I didn’t know what to tell him since anyone in or heading toward a career in lawyering knows that the answer to every legal question is that “it all depends.”  Laws can be ambiguous and outcomes vary all the time and are dependent on a number of things as facts can always be distinguished to appear different from other cases tried before it.

Generally, in California and most states, courts usually award custody to the primary caregiver, meaning the person who spends the most time with the child.  Usually that translates to the person who doesn’t hold paid employment and raises the child, but when both parents work, like in Joey’s case, it comes down to fitness and a calculation of time spent with the child.

Joey isn’t alone in his predicament.  A vast majority of family law cases received by LegalMatch are about child custody battles.

The best advice I could give to my friend was to seek the counsel of a qualified family law lawyer.  Because regardless of the legal situation, case outcomes are not always predictable.

Lawyers get a bad rap.  The public often sees attorneys as conniving opportunistic people who are only out to make a quick dollar by capitalizing on the misery of others.  Ask most people to describe what they think the typical attorney is and you’ll likely get the stereotypical view of the fast-talking imposing dark-suited figure with slicked back hair and a total lack of morals.

The media doesn’t help this image either.  For every Atticus Fitch, there is a multitude of Lilah Morgans.  It’s no wonder then why so many distrust attorneys.  With a reputation like that, who would ever want to deal with one, let alone be forced to hire one to represent them?

Though as bad as a Lilah Morgan can be, what hurts the image of attorneys more are the Lionel Hutzes, the incompetent lawyer who takes your money and does absolutely nothing in return.  This image is in many ways much worst then the evil money-grubbing one.  Chances are most people would rather have an amoral competent attorney than an amoral idiotic attorney.  Couple this fear with the terrifying prospect of actually being involved in a legal dispute where the only way out is to retain a lawyer, and you’ve just described hell.

This fear can be described in two simple words: legal malpractice.  This horrible phrase inevitably lingers in the back of the mind of every person who has hired a lawyer.  Because poor representation not only means you’ll likely lose whatever legal issue you’re involved in, but it also means that you’ll probably have to deal with the expensive headache of cleaning up your lawyer’s mess afterward.  Not to mention the additional nightmare of bringing a new lawsuit against your old attorney.  To some people, this prospect is enough for them to want to represent themselves rather than to retain a lawyer.

But is legal malpractice really something you should be afraid of?  Yes, it is.  But is it really all that likely to occur?  Probably not.

Legal malpractice isn’t as common as the public may think.  Lawyers are subject to constant scrutiny, from the court, their respective state bars in the form of continuing education, and their clients.  Furthermore, the process of becoming a lawyer is no easy task in of itself.  To be admitted into law school takes top grades and a high LSAT score, not to mention the three years it takes just to finish law school.

In fact, the total number of legal malpractice cases handled by LegalMatch.com in California alone is on average 50 percent less then the number of medical malpractice cases handled in just the northern half of California.  This statistic is true almost uniformly across the board.  Personal injury, family law, even wrongful termination cases on average total more in number than legal malpractice cases.  In a sense, it’s much easier to find a good attorney, than it is to locate a good doctor, employer, or spouse!

Nobel Prize winning economist Gary Becker performed a now famous study on the effects of income in marriage back in 1977.  What he discovered was that any change in income, positive or negative, makes a family more susceptible to divorce.

The results of this study are still proving true over 30 years later as the current recession in the U.S. and California specifically has seen a rise in money-related divorces, and also led to an increase in problems associated with an ancillary issue to divorce- alimony.

Popular divorce site Divorce360.com recently blogged about this very alimony trend.  Because the financial situations of many California couples seeking divorce, or already divorced, has changed so drastically in the past year, there has been a huge increase in requests for alimony modification.

We’re seeing similar trends at LegalMatch.  According to statistics compiled from all people seeking alimony legal assistance in California within the last 12 months, the overwhelming majority of inquiries involved either collection of past due alimony or termination of alimony payments.

The high level of interest in these two categories is even more interesting because they are polar opposites and come from different sides of the divorce- one being the spouse looking to alimony as income and needing all back payments, and the other being the spouse looking to alimony as a financial pitfall that he or she is trying to get out of to save needed funds.

The numbers are high and the reasons aren’t surprising.  The recession is fully reflected in all aspects of California divorce proceedings and the trend will continue as long as these tough economic times persist.

Almost 1200 out of every 100,000 people are on active probation in California. Although lower than the national average, California has more probationers than any other state. Ideally, probation is meant to monitor people convicted of a crime without having them being incarcerated. The alternative to probation would either be reducing sentencing laws or simply locking everyone up, neither of which are likely to happen any time soon.

I was curious about who was being arrested while on probation in California, and what their history was. Every year in California, LegalMatch gets tens of thousands of clients seeking criminal defense attorneys. I decided to look at LegalMatch statistics for the last 12 months for clients who were being charged with misdemeanors and felonies in California. Particularly, I compared the figures for both misdemeanor clients and felony clients according to their probation status:

Probation Status of Felony Suspects in California:

• No Probation: 70%
• Yes, currently on Probation: 18%
• I don’t know: 12%

Probation Status of Misdemeanor Suspects in California:

• No Probation: 77%
• Yes, currently on Probation: 14%
• I don’t know: 9% 

More suspects were being re-arrested for felony charges than misdemeanors. Conversely, more misdemeanor suspects were not already on probation, and more were aware of their probation status.

These statistics mirror national statistics showing that of those arrested while on probation, more were being arrested for felonies than misdemeanors. Is this a sign that the system isn’t working? Not necessarily, but considering that in California there are double the arrests for misdemeanors than felonies, one has to wonder why more of those who are being arrested again are being arrested for serious crimes. As California’s prison over crowding crisis continues to shake out, how California decides to continue its probation process will have an important effect on the future of the system.

As the economy continues to get hit, bankruptcy filings also keep growing. Over the last 12 months LegalMatch.com has had several thousand customers come to our site seeking consumer bankruptcy attorneys. I was curious to see if our numbers matched up with those from the American Bankruptcy Institute, which tallied official federal records for consumer bankruptcy filings in 2008.  The following are LegalMatch’s top bankruptcy states: 

         State            Percentage of Total Filings

1. CA               14%
2. FL                8%
3. NY              5%
4. IL                 4%
5. TX               4%
6. VA               4%
7. OH              4%
8. MI               3%
9. AZ               3%
10. NJ              3%

Our top ten was very similar to the results from the American Bankruptcy Institute, with California leading the way in filings for 2008.

A few states are over-represented relative to their population on both lists. Florida, for instance, has significantly more consumer bankruptcy customers coming to LegalMatch.com than New York and Texas, who both outnumber Floridians substantially. Arizona and New Jersey also make the top ten despite being 14^th and 11^th in population.

Why is Florida being hit so hard? Florida is always near the top in every other negative economic indicator, such as foreclosures. Some Florida developments are beginning to resemble ghost towns full of brand new empty houses. Markets such as Florida suffer the most from boom and bust periods, which leads to higher bankruptcy rates as more and more residents run into problems from their radically devalued homes.

California may have suffered from a similar malaise; Bloomberg reported that February 2009 house prices in California dropped an average of 41% from February 2008, compared to only a 16% drop nationally over the same period. 58% of home sales during this time were foreclosure sales, surely a significant reason for the dramatic declines in value.

Looking at stats such as foreclosure rates, bankruptcy rates, and other economic statistics indicates that all these things are related. If one state is suffering in one area it is likely also suffering in another. Stay tuned to LegalMatch for more analysis of economic trends and how your state might be faring during this massive economic downturn.