The recent release of the January 2017 Report of the Chief Administrative Judge’s Matrimonial Practice Advisory & Rules Committee (MPARC report), chaired by Supreme Court Justice Jeffrey S. Sunshine, provides the stimulus for reflection on the manner in which divorce lawyers process their client’s case matters from the moment that the potential client first walks through their office doors. Thus, this month’s column does not focus on particular substantive issues and, instead, looks at some of the practicalities of matrimonial practice and procedure in today’s environment. What follows may strike experienced, diligent divorce lawyers as elementary, but it bears review from time to time as one’s law practice develops and evolves, along with changes in the substantive law and in the procedures and rules applied by our courts. This is the same “back to basics” to which good lawyers, like star athletes, should periodically return.
From the very inception of the attorney client relationship, fact gathering is essential. A simple one-page intake form that provides the lawyer and office staff with the basic facts of identification of client and spouse (allowing for a particularized conflict of interest check), including contact information, biographical data (dates and places of birth for the parties and their children, college degrees, professional licenses, nature of and places of employment, Social Security numbers, health insurance data, etc.) among other things, should be completed at the first meeting. Having this form on hand for future client meetings, for settlement discussions with opposing counsel, for mediation sessions and for court appearances enables attorneys to have at their fingertips data that is essential to the knowledgeable discussion of issues wherever those talks take place. Reliable knowledge of the case’s basic facts provides the lawyer with credibility in all contexts, particularly on-the-record in the judge’s courtroom and off-the-record in the robing room. At the conclusion of the matter, the information that is essential for completion of the findings of fact and judgment of divorce, as well as the Health Department’s Certificate of Dissolution (DOH-2168), need not be dug out because it is all already on hand and located in one identifiable place in the file.
