(757)491-0240 Attorneys & Fees Diane Fener Diane Fener attended Boston University and Brandeis University for undergraduate and graduate school, and earned a bachelor of arts degree and teaching certification before attending Georgetown University Law Center, where she served as president of the student bar association. After graduation from law school in 1979, she was appointed by the courts in the District of Columbia to represent children and adults who could not afford to retain private counsel. She later joined the firm of Fulbright & Jaworski at its Los Angeles office. In 1995, she returned to the east coast to undertake an Innovative Demonstration Project for the United States Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, serving for three years as a Juvenile Detention Specialist for the Virginia Public Defender Commission. At the conclusion of that project, she was retained by the City of Virginia Beach, under another federal grant, to conduct an independent assessment of the local juvenile justice system and to make formal recommendations for improvements.   For more information about Ms. Fener's consulting work or to reach the Juvenile Resource Book, click here. Ms. Fener's work in juvenile and family law has been commended by the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services, the funding agency for these projects, and by the Virginia Beach Juvenile Court, where Ms. Fener advocates for the rights of children and families. She serves on the Advisory Board of the American Bar Association's national Juvenile Defender Center located in Washington, D.C.  She also serves on the Virginia Beach Community Criminal Justice Board and on the board of directors of the Friends of the Virginia Beach Juvenile Court. She served for two years on the board of directors of the Hampton Roads Youth Center and helped to create that alternative school. She has been a guest speaker at state conventions for the Virginia Public Defender Commission and Department of Criminal Justice Services. Ms. Fener has been  interviewed on the television program DATELINE NBC and quoted in the New York Times as an expert in juvenile law. Ms. Fener is admitted to practice law in Virginia, the District of Columbia, and California. Her extensive civil and criminal litigation experience includes numerous jury trials before state and federal courts. She is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia, California, New York and Virginia.     Robert Jeffries Robert Jeffries is a graduate of Dickinson College and the Georgetown University Law Center, where he was an editor of the Georgetown Law Journal. During law school and following his graduation, he spent five years representing criminal defendants in Washington, DC. He then spent ten years representing individuals and corporate clients in a variety of business litigation matters. These included complex securities class action cases involving tens of millions of dollars. Since 1998 Mr. Jeffries has been engaged in general practice including litigation in the Hampton Roads cities of Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Hampton, Newport News, Chesapeake and Suffolk. He is admitted to practice in the District of Columbia and Virginia. He speaks Spanish fluently. Email Questions and Consultations We frequently receive emails asking questions.  We are unable to answer them because the ethical rules require us to avoid conflicts of interest.  Giving advice to both sides of a dispute is a conflict of interest.  Because of this, we have to know who the parties are and check our records before we can give advice.  This process is an expense to us because of the clerical time involved.  In addition, we receive many, many requests for advice.   For these reasons, we stopped doing free consultations in 2005.  We now charge for them at our normal hourly rate of $200.  We still do free consultations for military personnel serving abroad or civilians serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.   Many questions can be answered in half an hour.  Rarely does a consultation last longer than an hour.  We can do them by phone or in person.  Payment for phone consultations must be given in advance.  Most often this is by credit card but other arrangements can be made if necessary.   If you have substantial assets or complicated custody issues, it really is best to come into the office for the initial consultation and allow an hour to cover everything.   There are attorneys who will do free consultations.  The quality of the consultation will vary.  But if cost is a concern, one strategy you can employ is to have free consultations with several lawyers and consider the points on which they agree as reliable.   Even if cost is a concern, paying for the consultation ensures that the lawyer will give you their full attention.  We frequently are told by people who have switched from other attorneys that they got more information in an hour of talking to us than in the entire time they spent working with the previous lawyer.     Fees Contested Cases:  $200 to $250 an hour. Uncontested Divorces:  $829 (includes all court costs) Deposit Retainer:  From $1,000 to $2,000 depending on the case - The deposit retainer system is designed to limit our losses when the client does not pay.  Each month we pay your bill from the money you have on deposit with us.  You then have 30 days to bring your deposit retainer back up to the agreed amount.  After the last bill is paid, we refund the remaining balance of your deposit.   In almost all contested divorce and child custody cases, the initial deposit required is $2,000. Initial Consultations:  Initial consultations are charged at an hourly rate of $200.  There is no fee for military personnel serving abroad or civilians serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.   Management of the Cost One of your goals should be cost-efficiency. The attorney has an obligation to help you analyze the costs and benefits of any legal action you are planning to take. There are three factors that you need to consider in deciding whether to take the step you are contemplating. They are: The expected benefit, The cost of achieving the benefit, and The probability of success. Example 1: You have custody of your daughter who will turn 17 next month. You want to seek an increase in child support. Based on your income and the other parent's income, the increase is estimated to be $50 per month. So the expected benefit is $600 because you will get an extra $50 a month for 12 months. The estimated cost is five hours of attorney time, most of which will be for attending court hearings. At our hourly rate of $200, that equals $1,000. The cost of achieving the benefit, therefore, is $1,000 if the hearing proves necessary. If the increase can be worked out over the phone and the court appearance is eliminated, the time required would be two hours or $400. So the cost will be somewhere between $400 and 1,000. The probability of success is nearly 100% because child support is essentially a simple arithmetic problem unless the income figure for one or the other parent is disputed. So, is it worth it? This example is marginal. The economic benefit to you is not likely to be more than $200 under the best-case scenario and you could have a net loss under the worst case scenario.  We would probably recommend that you either try to do it without an attorney or apply for services with the Division of Child Support Enforcement (DCSE).  Many people prefer not to deal with DCSE because it is slow, but in a case like this, a slow but free service beats a quicker but more expensive one.   Example 2: You have twin girls age 10. You want to seek an increase in support. Based on your income and the other parent's income, the increase is expected to be $300 a month. So the expected benefit is $3,600 a year times 8 years or $28,000. The costs in legal fees are estimated to be the same as in Example 2. So is it worth it? The decision is easy in this example because the benefit far exceeds the cost. Other Considerations Many cost-benefit decisions can be difficult because important factors are unknown. But even if the analysis is difficult and uncertain you should still do it so that you go into the case knowing at least the range within which the costs and benefits are likely to fall. Frequently, filing for a support increase will lead to the other parent filing a custody petition and vice-versa. The lawyer should tell you that these things are possible and could increase your cost. In some cases you would still want to proceed, even assuming the other parent will file a case of their own to retaliate.  In others, you may conclude it is better not to provoke what you can expect will be a battle.   If your children are faring badly in the care of the other parent, for example, you may want to still go forward with a petition for change of custody, even though you know the other parent will retaliate by asking for an increase in child support.   Home