Eleven chapters of rules, formulas and deadlines. This last one is about the variable that decides how well any of it works for you, and it is not in the statute.
If you ask me what to look for in a local attorney, and that includes me as well as a lot of friends and peers of mine, my answer is probably not the one you expect. It is the knowledge that person has of the law, but more importantly, it is the relationships. Learn more about the right lawyer.
I know how that sounds written down. It sounds like a lawyer telling you to hire a lawyer with connections. So let me explain exactly what I mean by it, because it is more specific and less glamorous than it sounds.
Credibility is not the same thing as knowing the law
The biggest thing for me is that I think the judges find me credible.
Here is what I mean by that. When it comes to judges, if you are an attorney who appears before them regularly, and when I say regularly I mean one time a week at a minimum, if not several times a week, then you get to the place where they decide that you are either credible or you are not credible. That decision gets made about every lawyer who walks into that building, and it gets made whether or not the lawyer knows it.
The biggest thing a lawyer has in front of a judge is credibility. If you have credibility in front of the judge, it means that the judge believes you're trying to do things the right way instead of trying to be sneaky or change the rules. That's the thing that having a local attorney helps you the most with.
Notice the definition inside that. Credibility is not the judge liking you. It is the judge believing you are trying to do things the right way instead of trying to be sneaky or change the rules.
I want to be precise about the word relationships, because it gets misread as something it is not. I do not necessarily mean personal relationships. I mean business relationships. If you establish yourself in a certain location, the way I have established myself in Anne Arundel County for a long time, you develop relationships with the judges. That local attorney has a reputation, and the reputation is what you are actually buying.
It goes wider than the bench, too. The relationships that matter are the ones within the courthouse. The relationships with people like the clerk's office, the relationships with people like the law clerks who work for the judges, the relationships with the judges themselves.
And it cuts both ways, which is the part that should interest you most as someone choosing. If the attorney has a reputation for being disreputable, or for trying to do it the easy way, or for trying to cut corners, that is going to hurt his client. You do not get to be separate from your lawyer's reputation. You inherit it the day you hire them.
The bottom line to all of this is that if your attorney has credibility with the judges, that means that whatever your case is, you have got a better shot at being successful, because you picked someone the court trusts.
What I will and will not promise you
Every consultation I give has the same honest limit in it, and I would rather say it here than have you discover it later.
We cannot guarantee you a result, but we can guarantee you our best work.
That matters because of what people arrive carrying. I have heard men cannot get custody in Maryland. I have heard that if you are accused of a sexual assault crime, you are going to jail no matter what. People come in with a secondhand verdict about their own case before anyone has looked at the facts, and it is almost always wrong in one direction or the other.
So it is so important to find an experienced lawyer in the area you are working in. That lawyer can help. They may not get you what you want, but they will try to get the best result possible.
Any lawyer who improves on that promise is selling something. What I can commit to is preparation, standing with the court, and treating the case like it matters, because someone's children or someone's home or someone's freedom usually depends on it.
How I think about the bill
Most family law attorneys, myself included, bill hourly on a divorce or child support case. That sets up an incentive worth naming out loud rather than pretending it is not there: the longer a case runs, the more the lawyer gets paid.
Here is my own theory about that, and I have said it the same way for years. I do much better by getting someone to get what they want, or to get a good deal, and them telling their friends about it, than I do by milking them for every cent.
As I say it: "we try at my firm, me and the lawyers who work for myself, try really hard to let people know how much we appreciate the money that we're spending." So what I try to do is balance the result you are looking for with making it as reasonably priced as possible. That is not always available, because the other side in a case can make it very difficult, and I will not pretend I control that half.
My rates are not the cheapest rates in this town at all. But my performance makes me believe those rates are reasonable, and if you look at my Google search results, you can see that people agree with me.
The bottom line is that we want to give you integrity and trust at a cost that is reasonable for the services you are receiving.
One more practical note on cost. I require a consultation fee. Even if you fully intend to handle your case yourself, pay it. Anyone who knows they have a child support case coming should contact an attorney and at the very least have a consultation to get an explanation of what is going to happen.
The two mistakes that cost families the most
Across every one of these conversations, I keep coming back to the same two.
The first is trying to do it alone out of fear of the cost, usually with a document standing in for judgment. Instead of a conversation at a conference table about what you want for physical and legal custody, people now come in with "a 20-page ChatGPT chart that tells you tons and tons of information that has no relevance to what we're trying to accomplish."
And I want to be careful here, because I understand the money. I have no problem if people do not have the money. I understand money plays a role in justice. I get that sometimes people have to represent themselves, and I do some low bono work myself. But you have to at least explore every possible avenue about people who do pro bono work or low bono work before you represent yourself.
The reason is arithmetic, not pride. A significant population of people come through here, many times in divorce and custody cases, after they have already made a mess of things, and then it ends up costing them more money than it would have in the first place, because now on top of the regular stuff, we have to fix the errors they made.
The second mistake happens in the first forty-eight hours after somebody gets served. Do not make an emotional, angry or irrational move. Do not get upset and file your own answer telling the court that the other person is a jerk or an idiot or a moron. Go to an attorney first. That document is the first thing a judge reads about you, and it is not the introduction you want.
There is one thing you can start doing today that costs nothing. Keep a journal, and put in it anything you would want your lawyer to hear about later. A canceled call or a missed exchange written down the day it happened carries weight months later that the same story, remembered, never will.
Good vibes, and what thirty years buys
I will end on something that is going to sound soft for a book full of statutes, and I mean it seriously.
I am big into good vibes. I think good vibes are super important, and having good vibes in combination with a potentially very difficult case, where you and your client and the people that work around the client's legal stuff all feel like they have a good vibe, I think that makes a big difference.
That is not a slogan about being pleasant. Family cases run a year. The parties end up in rooms together, and the lawyers end up in rooms together, repeatedly, for months. Whether those rooms are workable changes what comes out of them.
The firm reflects the same idea. I have two full-time domestic lawyers besides me and a full-time criminal lawyer, plus of counsel for trusts, wills and estates, because this is not something anybody here picks up occasionally.
And thirty years in the same two counties is not a line on a resume. It is the reason the clerk takes the call, the law clerk knows the name, and the judge starts from the assumption that what I am telling them is true. That is what is being hired. Not a promise about an outcome, which nobody honest will give, but the best odds available to a given set of facts.
Common questions
Does it matter if a Maryland family law attorney regularly practices in the specific county?
In my opinion it matters a great deal. If you appear before the same judges at least once a week, they reach a point where they decide you are either credible or you are not, and that judgment extends to the clerks and the law clerks too. That reputation is the thing you are paying a local attorney for.
What is the biggest mistake Mohink sees families make in a divorce or support case?
Two of them. Handling a case alone with generated research standing in for legal judgment, which usually ends up costing more once someone has to fix the errors. And reacting to being served with an angry filing that tells the court the other person is a jerk or an idiot or a moron, instead of consulting an attorney first.
Should a family consult an attorney even if they plan to represent themselves?
Yes. A paid consultation is worth it even if your true intention is to file on your own. Anyone who knows a case is coming should at the very least have a consultation to get an explanation of what is going to happen before anything gets filed.
Should I start keeping records before I have even talked to a lawyer?
Yes, and it costs you nothing. Write it down, the same day, in whatever you will actually keep. A note written the day a call was canceled or an exchange was missed is evidence. The same events reconstructed from memory eight months later are a story, and they carry far less weight.
What can an attorney promise about the outcome?
Not the outcome. We cannot guarantee you a result, but we can guarantee you our best work. An experienced lawyer in the right area may not get you what you want, but they will try to get you the best result possible, and anyone promising you more than that is selling you something.
Chapter reflection
Every formula and deadline in this book describes what Maryland law requires of your case. None of it describes how your case will go, and the gap between those two things is filled by preparation, by credibility in one building, and by whether you called somebody before or after you made a decision you could not take back.
That is the thread running from the two-to-four-month divorce in Chapter 1 to a support order that actually reflects what your family earns and how your children live. At every one of those steps, the law was fixed and the choice was yours.
Which leaves the easiest advice in the book, and the one I have given more often than any other. Before you file anything, before you sign anything, before you agree to a schedule because the room is tense and you want it to be over, talk to somebody who has been in that courthouse this week.