Billable Hours

This pretty much sums up why you do not want to engage in litigation of any sort (Hat Tip to Law Blog):

If you hire me, I promise that my billing system will reward me for solving your problems at the slowest possible pace, with as much duplication of effort as possible, and where I will face economic penalties for exercising any judgment that limits or focuses our work. I will, under this system, have strong incentives to embrace any opportunity to engage in discovery wars where the work is the easiest and the financial rewards are the greatest. And you can be assured that every member of my team will have a real financial inducement to exaggerate the amount of time they devote to every task.

Some more good advice on choosing an honest lawyer in a divorce can be found here. But even if your lawyer is reasonably honest, it only takes one unscrupulous lawyer to drive up fees on both sides…