The best family lawyers are some of the most charismatic, empathetic and resourceful practitioners within the legal profession. These professionals are passionate about the area they practise in and use a wide variety of talents to help their clients to secure ideal outcomes.
People facing issues related to the breakdown of a relationship often find themselves relying on the services of trusted family lawyers. These solicitors have a great deal of trust placed in them by former husbands, wives, partners and parents who have a lot staked on how these legal proceedings turn out.
Let’s take a look at the best qualities that all good family lawyers should have.
Excellent communication skills
Family lawyers more than nearly any other legal professional need to deal with subjective, emotionally charged matters dealt with by legal laypeople. This means that they need to be able to translate complex legal information in a way that’s meaningful to their client and makes sure that they are on the same page.
Communication skills also mean being a good listener. Family lawyers need to sit and listen to what their clients are telling them and taking note of what’s going to be relevant to the case.
Because these issues are so emotionally charged, solicitors will need to be particularly patient with their clients and can expect to act as pseudo-counsellors, helping them cope with the stress of the legal situation.
Thirdly, communication skills also refers to how their keep in touch with their clients. Maintaining an appropriate level of correspondence with clients is essential to keeping them up-to-date and making them feel like they haven’t been forgotten.
If the lawyer has a good grasp of technology this is also a bonus. Modern technologies make it much easier to keep clients up to date, as well as making communications between lawyers far more efficient. The ability to stay in touch and contact anybody instantly is very important for your family lawyer.
Excellent negotiators
Excellent communication skills also help family lawyers in being excellent negotiators. The legal system in Australia prefers and encourages disputing parties to settle issues like child custody and property settlement outside of the courtroom.
Skills like ADR (alternative dispute resolution) specially prepare solicitors for dealing with two disputing parties and reaching a favourable outcome. Through these processes the majority of these issues are dealt with quickly without need for lengthy litigation in court.
Family lawyers should not only be prepared for negotiation but encourages it as a means of resolving the dispute. Ideally solicitors will understand the emotional burden these disputes have on families, especially children, so finishing them as quickly and painlessly as possible is favourable.
Excellent rhetoricians
Experienced family lawyers understand that should negotiations fail they will need to represent their clients in court. There they will need to argue on behalf of their clients as to why they should receive custody of children, certain financial assets or any other related matter.
In order to argue on your behalf, family lawyers need to combine a mix of evidence and their own explanation of why it proves their case. They will use their rhetorical skill to persuade the judge to side with you while citing relevant evidence to back up their claims.
Excellent judgement
Above all, someone working as a professional consultant needs to have excellent judgement skills, and this is no less true when it comes to family lawyers. They will need to be able to respond to moves made by the opposing party and their solicitor in order to make sure that you are not disenfranchised.
You also want them to be able to use their judgement to be more efficient. If your lawyer uses an account management system, for example, they will not be billing you for the time they spend adding up your final costs (which is sadly a common occurrence). You want a lawyer who only charges you for the amount of time that they actually spend helping you.
Because you are relying on them to give you sound legal advice, you must implicitly trust the judgement of the professional you have hired. By paying for their services, you have put your vote of confidence in them to work to the best of their abilities and pursue all possible avenues in securing the ideal outcome.
