What to Expect When You Hire Us

Demystifying Attorney Stereotypes & Setting Ourselves Apart

I met a gentleman who had just started going to our church who asked me what I do for a living as we were getting acquainted. I responded honestly and told him that I was an attorney, to which he replied, “I hate lawyers!” He then spent the next half hour telling me all about how his brother-in-law had ripped him off. What a funny way to show hate.

No Two Lawyers Are Alike

Lawyers can be stereotyped and while it is not necessarily true, some have a well-earned reputation for causing problems for people. Therefore, it is understandable why some individuals dislike lawyers – funnily enough only until they need one. Lawyers also have a somewhat less glamorous reputation for solving problems, however, but here at Sandia Family Law we consider them unsung heroes.

Lawyers are positioned in our culture as the layman’s access point to justice, representing fairness or justice where wrongs done against them are made right. However, there are many different types of law practitioners and of course various ways to practice law. Since we are stuck with the court process to resolve such conflicts, we are stuck with its practitioners as well. And like so many other professions, the exact number of people practicing law also happens to be the exact number of different ways there are to practice law.

Some lawyers prefer drafting or doing research and writing to in-court litigation. Others prefer dealing with custody issues and some prefer financial issues. Some like to communicate via email, while others prefer phone calls. In fact, it is as impossible to fabricate a prototypical lawyer as it is to fabricate a prototypical client. Some clients are ideal and trust their attorney implicitly and follow his/her advice completely. Other clients seem to want to argue, second guess, and try to outthink their lawyer when it comes to decisions. Still other clients, believe it or not, are not completely forthcoming with all the information the lawyer needs to do his/her job, protecting their interests first and withholding important facts.

Lawyer Stereotypes

Some very common critiques of lawyers are:

They are difficult to get ahold of
They never return calls
They go through a client’s retainer too fast
They charge too much
They do not fight hard enough
They were not prepared when a case went to court

What to Expect When You Hire Us

We practice family law all over New Mexico, where there are only a couple hundred dedicated family law attorneys. The lawyers here pretty much all know each other and there is no prototypical model.

Some lawyers understand and appreciate settlement negotiation, and some lawyers do not. Our lawyers understand and appreciate settlement negotiation but will not waste client resources if the other side does not.

Family law is unique among the many forms of civil law in that it operates in the context of the most basic and indispensable of interactional associations: the family. Outcomes that happen today have a profound impact for years and generations to come for your family – particularly with custody and co-parenting cases.

Today, familial cycles and behaviors, good or bad, are either continued and encouraged or broken and ended. When lawyers do not see this happening, or worse, when they do see it happening and do nothing to stop it, they do a profound disservice to both their clients and their profession. There are lawyers who will knowingly do harm to your family for money without a second thought. We understand that fighting between parents hurts their children, so if this is a priority for you, then our firm will be a good fit.

Our attorneys at Sandia Family Law are all unique, with individual professional strengths and passions. While our differences do strengthen us, it is our common commitment to helping our clients transition into the next chapter of their lives that strengthens us even more. We take pride in knowing we are helping people.

Our approach is different in the sense that:

We will always do our best to communicate with you as quickly as possible
We are happy to explain any charges on your bill
We are committed to honesty and transparency
We are competent and efficient
We are aggressive litigators when the occasion arises

Every family law situation is different, and each requires taking careful inventory of the issues presented along with knowledge of a potential objective. When you are facing a serious family law issue, it is important to hire an attorney you can trust. Let us help you develop a plan that gets you where you want to go.

Contact us online or call our firm at (505) 544-5126 to schedule an appointment to discuss your case today.