Zach is joined by Beth from the Pro Legal Care LLC office, and they discuss how difficult it is to accurately help people who have “just one quick question” about their case – the theme of our entire podcast.

Zach Townsend
I’m Zach Townsend. I’m a family law lawyer in Illinois and Wisconsin. You’ve got just one quick question. Let’s get you some quick answers.

I have with me here today, Beth Wagner from my office.

Beth
Also known as your wife. Did you think about possibly titling your podcast, “Divorce Chat with My Wife?”

Zach Townsend
Nope.

Beth
No?

So being Beth from the office means that I get to talk to a lot of people on the phone every day who have just one quick question. I would guess that 50 % of the people that call in to our office start their phone call with, I’ve got just one quick question if I could talk to the attorney real quick.

Zach Townsend
I get it all the time. People will walk up to me or as soon as I find out that I’m an attorney, they’ll say, I’ve got a question for you. Just a quick question. One quick question. Or I’ll get people that I forgot existed from high school that send me a Facebook message. Hey, I’ve got a legal question. Can you help me out? Or a family member. People think that it’s just as simple as that.

Beth
And the problem is that we wish we could answer all of these quick questions. We wish we could give them quick and easy answers. The stereotype that we always joke about with lawyers is that the answer to every question is, it depends. It depends, it depends, it depends. So.

Zach Townsend
That’s what every lawyer says. Yeah, that’s one of the reasons

that people get so frustrated in trying to figure out legal solutions because it depends.

Beth
So what kinds of things does it depend on in family law and divorce law? Why can’t we just answer one quick question as easily as it seems like it would be to people?

Zach Townsend
Good question. So the way that the law works often is they have a rule and then an exception to the rule and then an exception to the exception of the rule and then an exception to the exception to the exception of the rule. And it just goes on like that. And that’s for every rule. And as you can imagine, there are a lot of rules in the law. So it ends up being a very layered, very layered. So for example, if you have just one quick question about

your divorce case, it’s very much going to depend on where your divorce case is at, what county it’s in, even what judge it’s assigned to within that county, whether the case has even started yet, whether it’s a short-term marriage or a long-term marriage, whether there’s a history of domestic violence, whether there’s an active order of protection, whether there are children involved. There are all kinds, there are a thousand other examples I can give you of where

one of these factors could tilt the scales or influence things because often what happens in the law, they’ve got what’s called a balancing test, well, there’ll be a variety of factors that are weighed. And sometimes they refer to it as the totality of the circumstances. And so,

Beth
That’s

around our office. That’s where we talk about the vibes being off. When Attorney Townsend is talking about the totality of the circumstances, the rest of us are talking about how the vibes are off.

Zach Townsend
Right, and imagine if judges get to go by vibes. Well, they don’t exactly, but if every relevant circumstance matters, then sometimes it kind of feels that way.

Beth
I think the vibes

is an important thing to think about with the location and the judge though...