How can I keep my fees and costs down?
The major cost in in a legal action - including divorces and bankruptcies, is
your attorney's time. You can significantly reduce the amount of time needed
by your attorney to prepare your case by being well organized. Your attorney
will need a lot of financial information from you. Information regarding your
home, your mortgage, your savings accounts, IRAs, 401(k)s, pensions, debts,
living expenses, etc. You can either pay your attorney to collect and organize
this information for you or you can spend a little time and energy getting
it yourself. With our guidance and coaching, we find that our clients can save
a significant amount of money by taking responsibility for this part of their
divorce. In addition, you'll find on our web site a number of forms and methods
to provide this important information - this will save both you and the attorney
time and can save you greater legal expense.
Computerized Information Management
Additionally, to further reduce
your fees and keep your costs
as low as possible, we have
developed an extremely efficient,
very effective proprietary
system of computerized information
management and document preparation
which we use in all of
our cases. With this system,
we can effectively manage the
process of organizing the information
that is so crucial to the preparation
of your case and ensure
that we have everything we
need. Once the information
is collected and entered into
a computerized database, it
can be directly merged into
the various petitions, motions,
exhibits and other documents
that are generated in your
case. This significantly reduces
your costs by minimizing our
document preparation time.
To further reduce costs, the
firm files and amends most
bankruptcy actions electronically
with the court.
Team Approach
In our office, we utilize a team
approach designed to provide you with the highest quality
legal representation while minimizing your fees and costs.
All of the members of our team are knowledgeable about your
case and capable of handling questions or details about the
case. With this team approach, Mrs. Geringer, as lead attorney,
supervises all aspects of your case while she delegates to
her experienced and highly competent staff the time consuming,
repetitive tasks that don't require her direct attention.
This saves you money since staff time is billed at a significantly
lower rates than Mrs. Geringer's time. Mrs. Geringer reserves
for herself those tasks that require her years of training,
experience and expertise, such as negotiation, interrogation,
trial preparation and representing clients in court. With
this team approach, you get the highest quality legal services
at the lowest cost.
Settling Out of Court
Finally, with Mrs. Geringer's
18 years of experience and
her reputation as a winning
litigater, we've found that this "intimidation
factor" often
makes it unnecessary to take
your case to trial. In fact,
a high proportion of our cases, approximately 75%, are settled
before trial. We recognize
that getting a favorable settlement
out of court is much
more cost effective for you
because it eliminates the time and
expense involved in taking
a case to trial. Also, with our experience in family law
matters
we know which issues to fight
for in court and which issues
to settle and how to settle them.
