Many professionals say they have worked with high conflict but do not seem to understand the nuances of personality disorders
What are the nuances of PDs you want them to understand?
A couple of things to consider:
If you haven't already, you might find it helpful to interview attorneys (say 3 or so) with a set of questions you want answered, including stating your goals if you know what they are, and asking them to outline strategies and tactics they recommend for your situation. You will learn a lot about how things work where you live and get a sense how they think and how they will treat you.
It's also helpful to ask them how long to expect they'll get back to you when you contact them, and what to expect when/if they go on vacation. You may also want to ask them if they feel litigation is a strength, since it's not out of the realm of normal for many of us to end up in front of a judge. You might even want to ask them about the judge, how they view him/her, their relationship, etc. since that's a wild card and the more you know the better.
It's also worth asking how they bill because you anticipate this will be a high-conflict divorce with stonewalling and obstruction and occasional high-conflict behaviors and would like to trim costs where possible. For example, my attorney said don't send attachments because she charged more for that. She also encouraged me to gather my questions into one email and bullet point them because she charged less that way. It was her recommendation, too, that I print out my own documents rather than having her firm send things by mail. When it came time to putting my documentation into binders, I did that work myself and saved a few thousand dollars. As things dragged on and I figured out how things worked, we also downshifted to have a junior partner (less expensive) handle paperwork, only kicking things up to my L when things got trickier. I saved thousands that way too.
Some people recommend consulting with aggressive lawyers just to eliminate them as a go-to for your ex, since conflict of interest kicks in and removes them from the pool.
Here's an article that can help you find an assertive attorney. In family law court, an aggressive lawyer could easily be someone with a PD. You might feel protected initially by having an aggressive attorney, but it can also cost more money as the conflict plays out in court, and can work against you if the judge is put off by lawyers with those reputations.
Some of us are (or were) drawn to people with PDs. This can play out when choosing an attorney because the certainty or swagger an aggressive (or possibly narcissistic) attorney displays can feel protective, almost like being in an idealization phase. If you are at all looking for vengeance or hoping to punish your ex or need therapeutic support from your attorney, be careful. That could be a recipe to drive the costs of your divorce higher.
My ex was a former trial attorney and I believed him when he said he would get full custody of our child. That made me take extra time to prepare. I found an assertive attorney who seemed to genuinely care about my son's well-being. She gave me really good counsel on occasions when I was, in retrospect, pretty dysregulated myself. An aggressive attorney might've capitalized on that vulnerability and picked up a chainsaw, when what I needed was a splash of cold water and some time to cool down.
You can always google "high-conflict divorce" or "parental alienation" to help find someone who caters to these cases, but more important imo is finding someone who can competently litigate, and someone you think will be attentive and can outline how they will represent your case and reach goals that are important to you. Your lawyer works for you, so the more you understand about high-conflict people (HCPs), the better. During my first meeting with the L I retained, she quoted the percentage of cases she was able to help successfully mediate. We sort of broke even because she was able to help us mediate 90 percent, leaving the last 10 percent to sort of sit out there waiting until it was time to go to court.
Think of it like hiring a key employee who you need to trust, who has the skills needed to help you execute on your vision.
You can get great feedback here, too. I don't know what I would've done without the people I met here, like ForeverDad and others.
