We'll find the right lawyer for you

Melissa Denton

Since you can see detail about One Lawyer on this site by clicking here, I won’t describe it much here. Basically it is a way that one attorney meets with both sides of a controversy and provides all of the legal advice, mediation, settlement conference judge, and document preparation services needed to resolve a disagreement. In divorce cases, like I handle, it is an obvious solution for people who don’t want to pay the financial or emotional cost of court battles between two attorneys. Many people are representing themselves because they don’t want to be “mean” and hire an attorney or because they are afraid of the cost of using lawyers. One Lawyer is usually available for a reasonable flat fee and saves a lot of money, time and anguish because neither side is disadvantaged by not having legal advice and all of the paperwork gets done properly.

While the primary reason for One Lawyer is to help the people who are resolving their case, it has other great benefits, too. One Lawyer is a natural “evolution” of the practice of attorneys who have been practicing a long time and want to move on from handling contested cases after so many years. The “R” word (retirement) is not so popular these days since many lawyers still enjoy using their expertise but want to evolve into more flexibility in how they practice. The wisdom these lawyers have gathered can be used to great effect in One Lawyer practice.

One of the most important societal benefits from One Lawyer is the vast relief it provides for the court system. One of the biggest trends in our legal system is self representation. Although our laws protect the right of people to represent themselves in the courts, it is extremely expensive and difficult for the courts to accommodate larger and larger numbers of people who don’t know what they are doing. It is extremely expensive for tax payers to hire judges who must nurse along large numbers of people who make many mistakes as they try to learn a complex legal system at the very time they are under huge amounts of stress.

We Americans have the right to try to fix our own plumbing and our own electrical systems and flood or electrocute ourselves while doing so. We have the right to try to do brain surgery on ourselves (though suicide is technically usually illegal). Saving some money by being your own lawyer is closer to trying brain surgery on yourself than it is trying to do your own plumbing. After all, plumbers need a lot of knowledge and experience but they don’t need the bachelor’s degree and doctorate degree that most all lawyers have. One Lawyer makes the expertise of a very experienced attorney available at a very reasonable price (and without fear of the other side’s lawyer) so you don’t feel the need to do your own legal work.

Even when you think everything is agreed and both sides are reasonable, use One Lawyer. Having an attorney make sure that both sides are aware of all their relevant rights and responsibilities is just basically smart. Even if you think you are good at writing, use One Lawyer. A lawyer can tell you if the things you wrote will have the effect you are trying for and a lawyer can make sure both sides understand the legal consequences of structuring agreements one way or another.

While it may seem self serving for me to tell you to get the help of a lawyer, I mean it from the bottom of my heart that I believe it is a very good idea to get the right attorney’s help. You don’t want just any attorney, you want the attorney who is right for your case, your personality and your issues. The ideas behind One Lawyer, which started in 2004,  are the reason I started Advantage Denton in 2008.

The idea of having an expert independently find the right lawyer for you was too good not to apply it to all areas of law. Advantage Denton finds the right lawyer for any kind of case, for any type of lawyer practice (One Lawyer and all others), and for any geographic location. The magic that makes this work is that this service is not another advertising vehicle for attorneys. This is a service that benefits the client and is paid for by the client. Any other method of finding a lawyer is paid for by a lawyer and is necessarily biased in one way or another.

The idea has come up to apply the concept of Advantage Denton to finding the right doctor or dentist or plumber. For now, Advantage Denton will stick to what we know. And we know attorneys. It would be great to be able to hire an expert at such a low cost to steer us to the right professional for any need, but at least we have Advantage Denton lawyer finders ready to find the right lawyer for you.

Lawyer finding – it takes one to know one.

Melissa Denton

One of the central ideas in Advantage Denton is saving money. It may seem that any business that encourages you to hire an expert is trying to get you to spend more money, not less money. We do encourage you to at least consult with a lawyer about your legal issues and that does cost money. We encourage you to use a lawyer finder to get connected to the right lawyer, but that saves you money. Both of these encouragements actually save you money overall.

Advantage Denton saves you money by being willing to find a lawyer who is willing to provide services in a very cost effective way. Our web site describes many different ways that lawyers can help you without breaking the bank. Please take a look at Many Cost Effective Ways to Use a Lawyer to see options. One Lawyer is a particularly effective and inexpensive way to get full legal advice and assistance with less stress and more privacy.

In addition to finding an attorney who can provide the type of legal service you want, Advantage Denton takes care to find the right lawyer for you. Going to the wrong lawyer is a bad idea. It wastes time and money and can be a very expensive mistake. Sometimes the attorney you might stumble into is not in the right area of law or the right geographic location. Sometimes you would happen across an attorney who does not have the type of credentials that a lawyer finder would consider adequate to do the job for you. It is a touchy subject, but some attorneys are not as good as other ones. You want us to find the attorney who is right for you, not just the attorney who paid the most for advertising.

Just as bad as going to the wrong lawyer is deciding to never even consult with a lawyer. Sometimes, it makes sense for you to represent yourself or to create your own paperwork to handle some legal matter. It is almost always best, however, to consult with a knowledgable attorney to see if you missed anything or if your paperwork is in order. Many times, it is not wise to represent yourself or to do your own legal work. It is cheaper and takes less time with less risk to just use the services of the right lawyer who can help you accomplish what you need most efficiently and correctly.

“A person who acts as her own lawyer has a fool for a client.” This saying, like a lot of old sayings, is full of truth. Just about anyone can afford $99 to have our lawyer finder arrange a free 30 minute consultation with the right attorney to analyze your situation and advise about legal issues. When you make mistakes in the legal arena, they almost always cause far more than $99 worth of grief.

To save money on legal fees, you can inform yourself on this web site about how to be a client and about what types of legal services are available. Your lawyer finder will work with you to determine what type of lawyer you need and will find them for you. You will save money, stress and time by having us find the right lawyer for you.

Melissa Denton

I watched a TED talk this morning about how important play is to human development. If you don’t know about TED talks, you are missing out. Perform a Google search “TED talk about play” and watch this presentation. I think that free online TED talks are one of the best developments in the Internet in this last decade. Anyway, back to play.

Although the science around play is just starting to be evaluated, it is an intriguing subject. Creativity and innovation appear to be proportionately linked to play experience. Anyone who has had or really known a child is aware that the important work of growing up  is handled through play. A recent New York Times article described how children’s learning experience in school is enhanced by recess. Kids without play time are disadvantaged in learning the other subjects taught at school.

Grownups apparently need play, too. The opposite of play is not work. The opposite of play is depression. People who love their work (like I do) are uplifted by it. People who dislike the majority of the tasks in their workday are miserable. Their misery spills out onto the rest of us when we conduct business or otherwise interact with them. Although the TED speaker implied that grownups in our society have forgotten how to play unlike or more than previous generations, I am not at all sure that is true. I expect that human nature and the development of grownups as a whole has not changed much over time.

If your environment is not allowing you to play, if you are feeling guilty about taking some time to do things you enjoy, if you feel sad without good reason – - it is time to play. As you have heard many times over, physical exercise is one of the best things you can do for yourself and if you make it exercise that engages you in play, you get multiples of goodness for yourself. Even bookworms like me needs some restoration and creativity enhancement from doing what they enjoy. I combine reading an enjoyable book with working out on an exercise machine for the best of all worlds.

I wish you the best in making decisions about bringing reasonable amounts of play into your life and balancing all of the demands you face. As for me, I feel that what I have learned reinforces some good habits I have and justifies the brisk walks we take during office hours. If we can use renewed creativity and energy to do a better and happier job, then we even make more money from a more enjoyable work life. It also helps that I love what I do and the lawyer finders who work to find the right lawyer for you truly enjoy their work. It is not play for you to stress out over how to find and evaluate lawyers, but it is truly fun and meaningful work for us to help you. Call us!

Melissa Denton

Desperate times call for desperate measures.  That saying always gets me going.  I wonder if it means that you should throw caution to the winds when times seem desperate.  Seems to me that is usually the time to be most cautious.  Nowadays, many of us are hiding in holes and extra caution abounds.  Some of us need to be bold, though.

It seems that the leaders of our country in Washington are wrestling with some major sacred cows that have not been reformed for a long time.  Tough times give license to go where more placid times just don’t inspire such adventures.

Advantage Denton is a new idea.  It is quite different from lawyer referral services which give you the name off of a list (sometimes a list that has been pre-qualified) and Advantage Denton is very different from the yellow pages and Internet lawyer listings that put the lawyers who pay most up front and center.  Having your own “mini-headhunter” to find the right lawyer for you is a radical and welcome concept.  Getting a lawyer is a scary process and most folks don’t really know what to look for to find the right lawyer for the issues they face when they are confronted with legal issues.  Fortunately, our lawyer finders are trained to find the right lawyer for you and they know what to look for, where to look and how to interpret what they find out about lawyers.

Another new idea, as introduced on this web site, is One Lawyer.  Believe it or not, the common sense idea of both people having one attorney help them with a problem is very different from almost all of the legal services available today.  It takes a special kind of lawyer, with the right experience and attitude, to help both sides of a controversy understand all of their rights and negotiate and finalize agreements to resolve legal issues.

We have an historically large number of people who are representing themselves in court and that number is growing.  I believe that many people who represent themselves are doing so because they believe it is “mean” and expensive to get lawyer help.  One Lawyer takes away the fear of using a lawyer because both sides get fair treatment and the lawyer’s only goal is to help resolve matters in a way that works for both sides.  The current adversarial system with hourly billing has many built-in incentives for attorneys and parties to not work toward common ground.  Those of us attorneys who still take the high road and resolve issues at the least emotional and financial cost are not looking for short time gain.  It is a very long view to see that saving clients money is the right thing to do.

One Lawyer is a new and developing process that can make a big difference to our justice system.  I encourage you to look at the description of this service in “Many cost effective ways to use lawyers” on this web site.  Using a lawyer finder to get the right lawyer for your needs is a new and bold idea whose time has come and One Lawyer is the best way for senior lawyers to give back to the community and help folks with all that knowledge we have accumulated over the years.  Thanks for reading this and for opening your mind to these new ideas.