The biggest annual event of the family law bar year has come and gone. Everyone who lives, eats and breathes family law down to those who practice family law on an occasional basis, travel down to Florida sun, sand and seas for an intensive three day conference on best practices in family law.
About 600 attorneys attend. Of those, about 1/6 practice family law full time. Our firm comprises about 10% of that full time number. The other 5/6 practice family law with varying degrees of committment, spending their time delving into other practice areas.
As I’ve written often and will re-itterate tonight, family law is sufficiently complex and specialized, that only people who are called to it and spend their every working minutes immersed in it, should ever venture into a family law case.
Interesting, one of our few competitors, the one who spends by far the most to advertise to the public, did not bother to attend the conference this year. They made the switch from business law to family law a few years ago, determining from a business model that they could make more money from their family law clients to their business clients. I get that therre is no “calling” there to practice family law, but to ignore the most significant event in the family law calendar struck me as the height of hubris.
Many good lessons were taught; much good was done as our week wore on. I am quite sure that all 10 of the attorney of my firm who were able to attend (one could not because her daughter was graduating high school this weekend – a good reason to miss the event) took much valuable information away from our conference.
I applaud the family law bar leadership for again putting on a stellar program. Their tireless efforts benefit all Georgians who have the need of a family law attorney’s services in the coming year.
While headquarted in Marietta, Michael handles all of our international and high asset clients in all of our offices from Marietta to Atlanta to Lawrenceville to Savannah to Canton to Gainesville.