Merely use them? I don’t see the harm in being familiar with them. Reading, watching, listening. Learning. That’s a good thing. A very good thing. Being dependent upon only free resources? No. That’s a bad thing.
Should you use free resources exclusively, without paying an attorney to represent you or at least consult with you (assuming you can afford an attorney’s help)? No. The family law legal system is a mess, and if success is your aim, then trying to navigate it and understand it and work within it on your own would be, with rare exception, foolish. I wish it weren’t true, but it is.
Ask sane people who thought they could represent themselves successfully in divorce and family law disputes how they fared. Precious few will tell you they have no regrets. Precious few will tell you they wouldn’t get an attorney’s help, if they had to do it all over again.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
How can I obtain assistance in a custody matter when I have no money and my ex-husband is not following the current court order?
In some jurisdictions there are legal services that exist for the purpose of helping the poor. They provide anywhere from discounted services to free services. Sometimes what you pay (if anything) is based upon your income (the less your income is, the less you pay). Not everyone qualifies for these reduced-fee or free services, and it should come as no surprise to that (with occasional exception), when it comes to free or cheap legal services, you get what you pay for.
Some law schools offer some legal help in the form of clinics staffed by law students who are supervised by a lawyer or lawyers. As you can imagine, because law students are students and not yet lawyers, the legal knowledge they have is limited, as is the kinds and amounts of legal help they can give. These legal clinics usually provide help in the form of showing you how to do-it-yourself. Rarely will legal clinics staffed by law students provide you with limited or full representation in court.
Some bar associations host legal clinics as well. Again, these are not soup to nuts outfits. They usually limit themselves to the kinds of legal questions the poor face: eviction, divorce, small claims, consumer protection issues, petty crime. These lawyers will volunteer to meet with you for a few minutes to an hour or so because a lot of people come to these clinics, so you won’t be getting all the information and advice you may want or need. And the same lawyers aren’t always at the clinics each time you show up. And some clinics may limit the amount of time you get to spend there, so that people don’t hog the free help.
Finally, some jurisdictions have laws that provide for the possibility of your ex paying for your lawyer—while the case is pending, not after the case is over—if you can’t pay for one yourself while the case is pending. For example, in the jurisdiction where I practice law (Utah), there is this statute:
(1) In any action filed under Title 30, Chapter 3, Divorce, Chapter 4, Separate Maintenance, or Title 78B, Chapter 7, Part 6, Cohabitant Abuse Protective Orders, and in any action to establish an order of custody, parent-time, child support, alimony, or division of property in a domestic case, the court may order a party to pay the costs, attorney fees, and witness fees, including expert witness fees, of the other party to enable the other party to prosecute or defend the action. The order may include provision for costs of the action.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
You may have a very difficult time finding free legal representation, BUT you may have a much easier time getting advice as to how you can and should proceed and how to defend yourself effectively.
Many lawyers don’t have the time or desire to represent people in your position for free (it’s a mess, lawyers don’t have a lot of free time to give their services away, and lawyers don’t like doing work for free—it’s hard enough collecting their fees from the clients who ostensibly agreed to pay them), but many lawyers will volunteer at legal clinics to provide legal information and some basic advice or guidance. Law school often run such clinics as well.
There are organizations that provide free or discounted representation under the right conditions (the main factor being that you can prove you clearly cannot afford to pay for an attorney’s services).
Contact your local bar association and the law schools nearest you to find out where these clinics and charitable legal services organizations are (find out if they hold clinics or consultations remotely (like via Zoom). Ask about other services that may be available free of charge or at a discounted rate.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
It depends mostly upon whether your attorney has a big heart and/or no head for business.
Generally, an attorney who takes your case without being paid as he/she goes but defers payment in the hope that he/she will be paid out of what you collect from your spouse is probably not a very intelligent or competent attorney. Some attorneys (usually new ones or desperate ones—and desperate ones are often new ones) will work a case, even if a client stops paying for his/her work, long after the client stops paying. These kinds of attorneys do this in the desperate hope that the client will eventually pay or because they believe that by getting stiffed, they are heroes/martyrs. In truth, however, these kinds of attorneys are simple fools because clients who have stopped paying (not fallen behind but got caught up—those kinds of clients are fairly common, and we’ve all been a little short sometimes, so it’s good when a creditor will cut us a little slack, as long as we don’t abuse the creditor’s good will) almost never, ever resume paying or paying their past due balances.
To be sure, sometimes a client honestly runs out of money, and when that occurs, the attorney must understand that he/she cannot stay in business working for people who don’t pay for his/her services. There is a class of clients who are simply grifters; they seek out the easy marks and when they find them, they exploit them. These are people who deliberately plan on paying an attorney some money up front to get a case going (and to get the attorney mentally and emotionally invested in the case), who then stop paying but keep the attorney slaving away by telling the attorney things along the lines of, “Oh, I’ve had some hard times, but I will pay you just as soon as I can, so keep working and I’ll pay you eventually, I promise,” or “Once you win me that chunk of money, I’ll pay you out of that,” or, “Please help me! I need this so badly! Think of the children!!!,” stuff like that. Such clients are poison.
Some lawyers (I was such a lawyer once) believe that non-paying clients are better than no clients, so they keep working for non-paying clients in the pathetic (but all too human) belief/hope that the client will be so happy with the great work the attorney does that the client cannot help but finally pay the bill out of gratitude and decency. Such lawyers are chumps. Other attorneys get a sense of nobility from working without pay “to help a struggling client” and to “make my little corner of the world a better place”.
Now don’t get me wrong: attorneys will, at times, volunteer to help those who are poor, but there’s a difference between choosing to work without pay and being duped into working without pay. There’s nothing noble about being a sucker.
It depends mostly upon whether your attorney has a big heart and/or no head for business. Generally, an attorney who takes your case without being paid as he/she goes, but defers payment in the hope that he/she will be paid out of what you collect from your spouse is probably not a very intelligent or competent attorney.
Some attorneys (usually new ones or desperate ones—and desperate ones are often new ones) will work a case, even if a client stops paying for his/her work, long after the client stops paying. These kinds of attorneys do this in the desperate hope that the client will eventually pay or because they believe that by getting stiffed they are heroes/martyrs.
In truth, however, these kinds of attorneys are simple fools because clients who have stopped paying (not fallen behind but got caught up—those kinds of clients are fairly common, and we’ve all been a little short sometimes, so it’s good when a creditor will cut us a little slack, as long as we don’t abuse the creditor’s good will) almost never, ever resume paying or paying their past due balances.
To be sure, sometimes a client honestly runs out of money, and when that occurs, the attorney must understand that he/she cannot stay in business working for people who don’t pay for his/her services.
There is a class of clients who are simply grifters; they seek out the easy marks and when they find them, they exploit them. These are people who deliberately plan on paying an attorney some money up front to get a case going (and to get the attorney mentally and emotionally invested in the case), who then stop paying but keep the attorney slaving away by telling the attorney things along the lines of, “Oh, I’ve had some hard times, but I will pay you just as soon as I can, so keep working and I’ll pay you eventually, I promise,” or “Once you win me that chunk of money, I’ll pay you out of that,” or, “Please help me! I need this so badly! Think of the children!!!,” stuff like that. Such clients are poison.
Some lawyers (I was such a lawyer once) believe that non-paying clients are better than no clients, so they keep working for non-paying clients in the pathetic (but all too human) belief/hope that the client will be so happy with the great work the attorney does that the client cannot help but finally pay the bill out of gratitude and decency. Such lawyers are chumps.
Other attorneys get a sense of nobility from working without pay “to help a struggling client” and to “make my little corner of the world a better place”. Now don’t get me wrong: attorneys will, at times, volunteer to help those who are poor, but there’s a difference between choosing to work without pay and being duped into working without pay. There’s nothing noble about being a sucker.
In my experience, free legal advice is worth what you pay for it, but I understand that there are some (even many) who simply cannot afford an attorney (or believe they can’t) who need legal advice or assistance.
There are some sources of free or discounted legal advice and services. Generally speaking and in my experience, they are of poor quality, and if there are exceptions, they are hard to find and hard to identify.
Still, if you are desperate and feel that any advice/help is better than none (and bear in mind that in many instances bad legal advice/help can be worse than none), you can call the local or state bar association for the jurisdiction (state) where you live and ask it for a list of free or discounted legal assistance providers. That would, in my opinion, be the best place to start.
In Utah, where I practice divorce and family law, the Utah State Bar’s number is 801–531–9077. Their website can be access here: Utah State Bar | Serving The Public and Legal Professionals. Ask for reference to the free legal help services provided by or known to the Utah State Bar when you call, or visit the website to search these options.
Local law schools almost always offer some kind of pro bono legal help through programs staffed by volunteer law students or by students who, as part of their course, help find answers to legal questions or help provide legal representation.
You could also do a Google/Duckduckgo/Bing/Opera search for “pro bono legal help” or “pro bono legal assistance” or similar searches, as well as searches for “discount lawyer” or “low cost lawyer” etc. Again, be warned: cheap legal services are rarely a bargain (heck, they’re rarely any good at all). Be thorough in your search. Choose wisely.
Many who believe they cannot afford an attorney “discover”, after considering the cheap and free options, that they can (or more accurately, that they can’t afford not to spend the money on good advice/help). That’s not a knock on poor people, it’s just acknowledging that there is a reason why good legal advice/representation is expensive.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
There are some great answers in this thread already. I hope that adding my two cents’ worth is informative too.
I am a divorce and family lawyer. With rare exception (too rare to make pro bono something I do not find personally worthwhile). I find pro bono cases to be mostly of no personal or professional benefit to me at all, but pro bono was never intended to benefit lawyers but to be “for the public good”. That’s literally what pro bono means. The fully stated term is “pro bono publico” which is Latin for “for the public good.”
Lawyers are expected provide pro bono publico assistance as part of their professional obligations. Many provide none, others provide such services in the form of providing answers to legal questions (which is relatively easy), as opposed to providing free legal representation. Personally, I cannot afford to provide free legal representation without it making me miserable. Why?
Most (most, not all) pro bono divorce and family law clients are, in my experience, among the most self-entitled, complaining, bothersome, unrealistic, unreasonable clients. This is one reason why pro bono work is not work I enjoy.
Even the good pro bono clients’ cases often require significant amounts of attorney work, and the practice of law (especially divorce and family law) is not as lucrative many believe. It is impossible to predict how long a law suit will last and what it will require from the lawyer. Unlike providing a hungry person with a meal, pro bono legal services can extract more from a lawyer than he/she ever imagined or is able to give. This is why I have found it almost impossible to provide pro bono divorce and family law services. This is another reason why pro bono work is not work I enjoy.
In my experience, most decent people who are lawyers understand the noble reasons for pro bono publico assistance, but most don’t like pro bono work (for the reasons I have stated above) and prefer to avoid it or to find the most convenient ways to provide pro bono help. Myself included. I’m certainly not proud of this fact, but at the same time I’m not going to hang my head in shame. This attitude doesn’t make such lawyers bad people; giving away anything of value free is hard at least, and can be crippling for lawyers at worst.
That stated, it is easier than ever to handle legal matters without an attorney, and it is get getting easier every day (this is one of many reasons why the practice of law is less lucrative than it used to be and why it’s harder for lawyer to provide free services). The Internet has made knowledge that used to be known and used by the few who learned it in law school and made it available to everyone free of charge. Both the Internet and artificial intelligence are enabling scrappy entrepreneurs to develop inexpensive ways to enable non-lawyers to prepare legal documents of a quality that was unimaginable a generation or two ago.
One of the best ways to make pro bono help appealing to a lawyer is for those seeking pro bono help to educate themselves about the workings and the limitations of the legal system, to do as much the work they can do for themselves (see above), to seek help for truly serious matters where the client is being wronged (not trying to avoid responsibility for a legitimate speeding ticket, for example), to be understanding of the limits of an attorney’s ability to provide pro bono services, and to take a realistic view of the merits of one’s case, so that the lawyer is utilized if and as truly necessary and not treated as a slave to exploit and to whose labor the pro bono client is entitled, and to be appreciative of the volunteer lawyer’s efforts on the client’s behalf.
Your question assumes a false fact. Lawyers are not always paid no matter the results.
One example is a contingency fee case. A contingency fee case is one in which the lawyer’s fee is contingent, i.e., conditioned, upon a particular outcome, usually the recovery of money damages, with the attorney receiving a portion of the damages awarded to the client), if the client does not win or settle, and thus if no money is recovered, then the lawyer does not get paid).
Another example is when a lawyer voluntarily works without getting paid. Lawyers who provide legal services free of charge usually do so when a client needs help but cannot pay, or if the lawyer wants to support a cause he/she cares about by donating his/her services without charge. This is known as pro bono publico (“for the public good”) or just “pro bono” service.
Another good old-fashioned example of a situation in which the lawyer is not paid, no matter the results, is when the lawyer does work for the client first, then bills the client for the work performed, but the client refuses to pay. When I was young and stupid, I encountered this problem on occasion. After a while (too long a while), I got tired of getting stiffed and I changed the way I billed and collected.
But please remember: 1) talking to an attorney for legal information or even legal advice does not mean that a lawyer will give you a simple, inevitable path to success with your particular legal problem (the lawyer might, but it’s not guaranteed, it can’t be); 2) some services are limited to people who are poor who cannot afford legal services; and 3) you get what you pay for, i.e., lawyers only have some much time they can spare handing out legal information and legal advice.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
While I provide some pro bono assistance (but not exclusively), I don’t like providing most kinds of pro bono legal services. I know I’m not alone in feeling this way. Candidly, most pro bono clients in my experience ranked among the worst clients: least courteous and gracious, least cooperative and patient, least realistic, most entitled, and most demanding.
Now of course not all pro bono clients are hard to work with, but I’ve had consistently negative experience with pro bono clients. I like to provide pro bono assistance in the form of helping people find answers to questions and resources for helping themselves. Providing legal services is hard enough when I am paid to do it. I find that free legal representation is often taken for granted, which makes providing it all the more difficult and miserable.
How do you handle calls at your law office from people who ask if you would do legal work for them pro bono?
All of us, no matter what our job is, should use our skills to help those who are in dire need our particular kind of help but who cannot afford it. And decent people in various fields do just that.
I offer pro bono help (it’s my moral obligation, even if it weren’t a professional obligation), but frankly I do so on my own terms. If I ever offered to help somebody with a highly contentious divorce on a pro bono basis (I am a divorce and family law attorney), I might never see the end of that case. It could prove ruinous to me financially and in my personal life. Now I don’t give people that long explanation when they ask for pro bono services from me, but that is often what is behind declining to provide pro bono help.
There are two professions that are more “popular” when it comes to pro bono: medicine and law.
The problem with being so popular is that medical care and legal services aren’t as simple to provide on a pro bono basis as is a hot meal or a simple appliance repair (and please don’t misunderstand me; I’m not suggesting that if you’re a small appliance repairman that your free services are any less valuable than those of a doctor or lawyer, but the fact of the matter is that if you can help somebody in 15 minutes or so, it makes it easier to provide that help as opposed to an operation that could take a doctor hours and a staff of half a dozen people to perform or a law suit that could last for months or years).
Sure, doctors may be able to provide great relief with a tablet or two. Lawyers may be able to answer a single legal question or write a one-page demand letter.
But when people need a surgical procedure or legal representation costing tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, it’s not a matter of mere inconvenience to provide service free of charge at that level, it can become impossible to provide pro bono services at that level for all but the wealthiest of doctors and lawyers.
How Pro Bono Works – and Why
More often than you might think lawyers get calls from people who believe that they qualify for free legal services because they have a legal problem that they cannot afford (or feel that that they cannot afford) to pay a lawyer to help them with. That’s not how it works.
For example, in my case (I am a divorce lawyer), many times people want to divorce not because their life or safety is in danger but simply because they are miserable in their marriages. If people who are miserable in their marriages also happened to be poor, that does not mean that they are entitled to pro bono legal services (frankly, few, if any, are “entitled” to pro bono help or it ceases to be pro bono help, but I digress). Pro bono is typically restricted to situations where without the help your life or safety or your fundamental human rights will be irreparably harmed or destroyed. It’s why we run soup kitchens for the starving, but don’t give free cups—or even discounted cups—of coffee if you’re a dollar short.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277