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I had to fire my lawyer this week. I paid a $5,000 retainer. After the initial court appearance the bill was at $3,200. Since court she has made a handful of phone calls and we exchanged about a dozen emails. Last week she emailed me that my account balance was down to $600. I reviewed the bills and it became apparent that she was bleeding me of my money. Billing a half an hour for emails that took five minutes to read and respond to, a half an hour to leave a message with my boss to call her back.

Needless to say I am a but apprehensive about shelling out another 5k for a new lawyer after this experience. If anyone has any advice on proceeding Pro Se, representing myself, any input would be much appreciated.

Wow, that stinks.  I wouldn't recommend going it alone unless you are extremely well versed, but I would suggest asking around locally for good recommendations.  Attorneys are expensive, of course, but they do vary.  I feel mine has been very fair.  He explained to me up front that he charges in 6 minute increments, and he does.  He has a 250 hourly fee.  He has made himself very available to me, and although I've spent 3K so (and don't even have custody or child support issues -- just an extremely high conflict PD husband) -- I don't feel I've been taken advantage of at all.

He was recommended to me my a friend who went through a nasty divorce.  A bonus is he is truly good at what he does and cares, or at least seems to.  I feel fortunate.

Ask around and see if you can find someone who is good but more reasonable.

Good luck!

papa,

I'm doing it pro se.  I did all the work while we were married for him to establish custody of his daughter as well.  (Mother told another man was his daughter.  They divorced when she was 11 yrs old, then mom called my H about being daddy.  Mom went off deep end on drugs, so went to court.)

Now putting the time and effort into doing our divorce pro se.  I am in TX.  Not too difficult, but that is because I am being very agreeable (giving him our business just so I can get out with some things intact) and so we are filing uncontested.

Do you feel you can have an uncontested divorce?  If so, I found it pretty simple so far.

I am not going through a divorce, we were never married, it just a custody case. It will probably help if I disclose some of the details. We were together for twelve years and have two children, S11 and D10. I filed for an emergency custody order after she left our home and moved in with her adult daughter's exbf. I have been granted temporary full legal and physical custody. We were both ordered to abstain from drugs and alcohol, complete chemical assessments, psych evals, I to continue seeing my therapist and she was referred to a therapist by the GaL, and to follow any recommendations made the mental health professionals.

At this point I have complied with everything. She has not followed the order at all. I took my assessment and made my appointment for the psych eval within seven days as was ordered by the court. I have been recommended to outpatient treatment and to take random UA's as a result of my chemical health assessment. My psych eval is scheduled for next Tuesday the 20th. We both had a dirty UA the fisrt time we were tested; I have since had two clean UA's. My ex has continued to drink and use drugs; I know this because we still have a joint bank account and I have pulled bank statements. She has scheduled her psych eval for sometime at the end of this month. She took her chemical assessment yesterday, but she failed to sign a release for me to be a collateral as ordered by the court. Our next court date is scheduled for November. As she has no insurance and is spending half of her income on drugs and alcohol I expect that when we return to court that she will not have followed through on treatment or entered into therapy.

I asked for the psych evals with the hope that she will be properly diagnosed as having BPD. I will begin searching for an expert witness to testify in court on BPD and the effects it has on children. Our children have been in therapy for over a year, their mother has not been involved with this at all, both of their therapists are in my corner as well.

Since your case is custody, I would be hesitant to go pro se.  As atcrossroads mentioned, shop around for a good but reasonable attorney.  My son's attorney had a paralegal he could call or email and it cost roughly half of what she charged.  He had just a custody case, no divorce.

If your ex claims she wants to get help, but has no insurance or means to pay out of pocket, a good attorney will know how to counter this.  You want a good, tight, and professionally written final order that locks your exgf into certain areas and is not easily challenged or vague in certain areas.

For instance, in my son's order granting him sole custody, his exgf had all sorts of hoops she had to jump through in order to get professionally supervised visitation (which included that is ex had to pay the supervision fee), a hair follicle drug test, child support, who got to claim daughter on income tax return, etc. 

I tried it for one hearing, in front of a support master.  I was trying to correct approx $4000 in mistakes made on a previous Order.  My ex was there with her talentless, blow-hard attorney.  The blow-hard attorney just batted her eyelashes at the master, stated a bunch of very obvious things, and the master took it.  for no reason other than I was not represented, I was given no respect at all.  I feel my courthouse is particularly bad, but then again it soudns as if they are all bad and it's a matter of which one you are in, is it not as bad as the rest with incompetence.

So I now hired another attorney.  One who opened up her own practice after working for my former attorney's firm (attorney that I fired).

Difficult decision because there are so many trip wires that cannot be predicted or controlled.     

My L gave me her most recent bill for $9K and said if I could pay it by the end of the month she would knock off $1K. There are some decent Ls out there, not just in representing you well, but who recognize the hardship financially. After going through the first retainer, I told her I would pay every cent, but that I would need to pay her in installments, would never be late, and would pay her even when I was caught up because I knew this was going to go on a long time. In response, she told me how I could save money (I prepared my own deposition binder, which saved about $3K), and to not send her every email N/BPDx sent. She also said to not send her attachments because she charged higher for those emails. If you retain another L, try the same tactic and be very forthright about how you will be doing what you can to shave the bill so you can invest that money in your kids.

I've spent a bunch of time in court listening to other lawyers and no question in my mind does it make a difference. I watched inexperienced Ls bungle hearings, and during a whole day of waiting for my case to come up, my L explained what others Ls were doing poorly, and how they could have handled it. Judges don't coach and correct Ls, they rule on things the way they're presented.

Find a good L. Invest the time in asking hard questions and learn as much as you can about the process. Make sure you are clear with them about the money, and how hard you're willing to work. A decent L will respect you for that.