Family Law Mail Solicitation.

How often have you found out that a family member got a speeding ticket before they revealed it to you? Your intuition was likely borne out of the fact that attorney solicitations filled your mailbox.

Now, imagine that you have been retained to represent a victim of domestic violence who has finally gathered the courage to leave a toxic, abusive marriage. Your client discloses years of physical abuse and threats. You assure your client that the minute the divorce case is accepted by the clerk, you will give your client a heads-up to activate her/his/their safety plan to leave the home before the abuser is served. Two days later, before you even have the summons back, just hours before your client is set to leave the house, you get a frantic call that an attorney has alerted the abusive spouse by mail that the divorce was filed. Your client suffered yet another beating; this time thankfully escaping with her life.

Now, like de minimis traffic ticket cases, when a family law case is filed, the parties are mailed lawyer solicitations advising them that a family law case has been filed against them. Our family practice at Coast to Coast Legal Aid of South Florida focuses on the representation of victims of intimate partner violence and has for the past 30 years. It is important for attorneys who do not regularly represent victims of intimate partner violence to not only be educated about the dynamics of domestic violence and know where to refer clients for a lethality assessment and safety plan, but also to understand that separation has been identified as an important risk factor for lethal violence and injury to a victim. Domestic violence is about power and control. When abusers feel their control slipping away, they act violently in an attempt to hold on to what they want to control, their spouse.

It is understood that family law is a rich source of revenue for attorneys. However, the advertisements being sent in these family law cases serve to alert the abuser, bypassing our client's ability to initiate their safety plan. The results could be dire. When the perpetrator of domestic violence becomes aware that the victim intends to permanently separate, it is a period of high lethality not only for the victim but also the parties' children.

The preliminary statement in the Family Law Section's Bounds of Advocacy--"Goals for Family Lawyers"--states that the practice of family law is different from other areas of the law: "The intent is to...