The Future of Divorce Court with Randy Kessler - Divorce Attorney in Atlanta (Valuation Podcast)

The Future of Divorce Court with Randy Kessler - Divorce Attorney in Atlanta (Valuation Podcast)

How do we incorporate Zoom and GoToMeeting to facilitate divorces and continue to move couples through the process. The courts are open and divorce papers can be filed, but what if we can't show up in person?

Welcome to ValuationPodcast.com – a podcast and video series on all things pertaining to business valuations. I am Melissa Gragg, a financial expert witness in St. Louis, specializing in high net-worth divorces and partner disputes where there is a business valuation involved. 

We discuss the future of divorce court, mediation and collaborative divorce in this episode with Randy Kessler a divorce lawyer in Atlanta, Georgia for over 30 years and founding Partner of KS Family Law, a 30 person family law firm in Atlanta.  He represents entertainers and athletes - including The Real Housewifes of Atlanta cast member Nene Leakes, Evander Holyfield, Ludacris, Usher Raymond and Michael Jordan's ex-wife. 

Randy wrote the book "Divorce: Protect Yourself, Your Kids and Your Future" (available at http://www.divorceprotectyourself.com)
 
Welcome Randy – we are so lucky to have you here – talking about the Future of Divorce Court or Divorce Litigation

Wrote an article for Law.com titled Trial by Zoom: We Have Begun a New Era

This article was all about the final exam for Emory Law School Jury Trial Class – and it was a divorce case! 

1. How did the law students simulate a real trial? What were some of the specifics of the trial?
2. What were some of the benefits of the zoom trial or zoom court?
3. What were some of the difficulties with having an online trial format?
4. Let’s clear up some misconceptions about court - Are Georgia divorce courts “closed” and can you file divorce papers right now?
5. Where do you see divorce litigation in the future? In 6 months or a year, do you see the court system completely changing or will we go back to how we did things in the past?
6. The biggest concern I hear from divorce attorneys regarding online trials, is about the psychology of the trial process. Are we going to be as effective if we are not all in the same room?
7. What can we do now to get prepared for online divorce?
8. Do you think there will be more divorce mediation or alternative ways of getting divorced?

Thanks so much for joining us on http://www.ValuationPodcast.com

Melissa Gragg, CVA, MAFF, CDFA
Expert testimony for financial and valuation issues
http://www.BridgeValuation.com
melissa@bridgevaluation.com 
Cell: (314) 541-8163
Bridge Valuation Partners, LLC
301 Sovereign Court, Suite 208
St. Louis, MO 63011 

Randall M. Kessler, Esq.
KSFamilyLaw.com (ksfamilylaw.com)
rkessler@ksfamilylaw.com
Emory Law School Trial Professor
Past Chair, ABA Family Law Section
Author: DivorceProtectYourself.com
Fellow, IAFL
@GADivorce
404.688.8810 (ext. 103)
101 Marietta Street, Suite 3500
Atlanta, Georgia 30303
Follow: https://www.linkedin.com/in/randallkessler/

Transcript

Melissa Gragg: 0:00

Hi, welcome to valuation podcast.com, a podcast and video series on all things pertaining to business valuations. I'm Melissa Gragg, a financial expert witness in st. Louis. I have the pleasure today of discussing a divorce and court and trials with Randy Kessler. He is actually a high profile divorce lawyer in Atlanta, Georgia for over 30 years. He has founded and is a partner in KS Family Law, a 30 person family law firm in Atlanta. Um, and he represents some very interesting people, entertainers, athletes. Um, he's handled some cases that you probably have heard of the real housewives, Nene Leakes, um, Evander Holyfield, Ludicrous, usher, and even Michael Jordan. Wow. You know, we're all watching the Last Dance right now.

Randy Kessler: 0:59

We're on the other side of that one, but you know,

Melissa Gragg: 1:01

Okay. Right, right, right, right. He also has written a book called divorce, protect yourself, your kids and your future. You can actually get that divorce prod a divorce, protect yourself.com. He was the former chair of the family law section of the American bar association. Uh, he's a current professor at Emory law school, which we will talk about. Um, and he has also created a new app and website called http://starsona.com, which actually provides personal videos from stars to their fans, which is very interesting. Um, one of the really cool things is that Randy has actually reached this highly regarded status on LinkedIn called an influencer with over 425,000 followers. That's pretty impressive. Welcome, Randy. We're so lucky to have you.

Randy Kessler: 1:57

Wow. Thank you for that intro. We have any time left. That was amazing.

Melissa Gragg: 2:02

Well, we're actually going to talk about a pretty fun topic, I think at least for you and I, um, you know, about the future of divorce court or divorce litigation. Um, so you actually wrote an article for law.com titled trial by zoom. We've begun a new era. And I really liked the article. Um, but it was about the final exam for Emory law school. And it was a jury trial class and it was a divorce case. So how did the students actually, how were they able to simulate a real trial? Like what were some of the specifics? How did this work?

Randy Kessler: 2:42

Well, first of all, it's a thank you for having me on this. It's flattering to be asked to be on and always love seeing you. I'd rather see you in person, but you know, zoom and internet in so bad. Um, so to set it up for you all in Georgia, we sometimes do trials by D by a jury for divorce. Everyone has the choice. They can say, I want a jury trial to divide the money and every now and then it happens. Um, not a lot, I've done 30 or 40 over 30 years. So it's not that many yet. Can you imagine doing a divorce case by jury? So what we do at every law school is we teach jury trials and the students, the first week they do their practice opening statements and then the next week it's direct exam. And then they, we actually have real business, valuation experts, legitimate ones that we use in court, come in and talk to the students about how they work and how they can help the students or help the lawyers. And then they practice cross examining and direct examining the business valuation and their report. And then the final trial every year is actually in a courthouse and it's a divorce fact pattern. So we go down to the Fulton County or the cap County courthouse. There are four dockets, you know, two students representing mom, two students representing dead and a judge and a bailiff and the judge and the bail of grade them. And we do the whole trial. We have high school students or senior citizens at jurors and the students at this point, we're really disappointed. Of course we all were that they weren't going to get to have their final trials, but they had them. Now we didn't use jurors because it would have been too complicated, but we had Emory technicians on standby in case something happened that went wrong. But each of the four dockets had a real judge, a real professor and for students trying their entire case. And it was great, not just because of what the students learned, but what we learned and what the judges learned. And the first thing that we learned is you can do it. You can present evidence. And then we started to count the benefits and the disadvantages and the benefits way outweigh the disadvantages. Yes, we'll talk later. I'm sure about how being a person is much better for a lot of reasons in judging, engaging somebody's demeanor is better, but I mean, I can start listening. We'd be here all day, Melissa, if I talked to you about the idea that for instance, objections, the way we objected students, didn't have to yell and jump up and scream and get the judge's attention. They just raised a paddle or a sheet that said, objection, they held right to the screen. If the judge wasn't paying attention, say your honor, and the judge would look up and see objection and stop everything much more polite.

Melissa Gragg: 5:11

Well, and I think that, you know, I think that we understand a lot of the benefits from an efficiency standpoint, like as an expert witness, we can, we could come in nine o'clock docket, but three other things have to be heard. So now it's 10 30, 11 o'clock. And then maybe we get on the stand, maybe not, but then everybody gets hungry. So then we got to leave at noon and come back at one. And I mean, it's so much going on that if, and you're kind of just kind of tied up for the entire day, of course, charging your client, right? And you really maybe only testify two, three, four or five hours, but you're there for all day. You know, I think that's one of the benefits I've seen.

Randy Kessler: 6:01

Let's keep going. Or the lawyers, they switched courtrooms because the judge has to yield the courtroom to a bigger case. And the Lord forgets to tell you which courtroom to meet in, or your report is 14 volumes and you have to bring it up the elevator and the elevator is crowded and you can't use the stairs. Well, we preloaded all the evidence. So all we'd have to say is, your honor, I'd like to pull up exhibit 32 a and share it on the screen. And there it is. And we'd have to make copies and we didn't have to break her back, bringing it up. Um, so yeah, there are a lot of barriers.

Melissa Gragg: 6:33

It's true. Cause you, then you, you have people that are like go to exhibit 32 and you open up the book. There's no exhibit. And you're like, really, okay, this is, this is not working, but

Randy Kessler: 6:44

Make copies for everybody usually says, not just your copy, it's the judge and the judge's assistant and the lawyer and the lawyer and the opposing counsel. The client needs to say, me too. I need to see a copy and write your paralegal. You want them to follow? So it was so much easier that way.

Melissa Gragg: 7:00

Well, and I think that the other, you know, some of the other issues is that you get to court, everybody's prepared, everybody's ready to go. And then something happens or the judge isn't there and then you've done all of these things and you actually are not even going to go to trial that day. Um, I think that though, you know, like from an efficiency standpoint, I think everybody, the court, the attorneys, the experts all believe that this is the way to go. But I think that there are also some of the difficulties, you know, with how do we really facilitate that now a jury trial completely different, right? But divorce court, we're usually judged. And two attorneys, two client. I mean, it's not like what everybody thinks on TV. There's not a packed courtroom, you know? Um, there's a handful of people. And so why not do it in that aspect? You know, what do you think are some of the problems that people are, are already gonna sense?

Randy Kessler: 8:02

Well, I'm thinking big, I'm thinking jury trials are going to happen. So if a jury trial had happened, like you said, divorce, you know, basically an administrative hearing with a judge, you know, you think of jury trial sooner or later, if every juror potential juror has a device or we can make available a wifi room, the juror can go to, you might have people saying, well, I'm a criminal defendant. I'm entitled to a jury, but I'm going to sit in jail for two years unless I agree to do a jury by zoom. So when there's, you know, they say necessity is the mother of invention. So if they're thinking about those things, certainly we can figure out the fit. This is you're talking about, you know, how can you not do it by zoom? How can you not get on the camera and say, you know what, your honor, we're going to do this. And guess what? Even if the problems you mentioned was to happen, the judge has another trial or a family emergency. At least I didn't get in my car, put my stuff in, drive downtown, go through security, get the elevator on, pack my bags. If the judge says we're gonna have to come back tomorrow, I take my tie off. I think we took it off and I jumped back in my bed or I do whatever I want to do. So it's nothing's is as bad as first blush. There are those issues though. You know what happens when people cheat, someone is texting their client. What to say during the testimony? Well, I mean, we have that problem. Now people could be whispering or, you know, yes for right leg right here. Nope. You know, they'll have to be regulations and punishments and penalties and trust issues. Um, and maybe it will be a backup camera that shows what you're doing with your hands. If you've got a reputation for cheating and you know, so I haven't figured all that stuff out and nobody has yet, but the benefits have to outweigh the disadvantages. The fact that we can have, I had two, um, hearings last week. That's not a big deal to do two in one day. You know, we've done them. You you've had to do two in one day, but in Georgia we have a lot of different counties. I had one in Fulton County in the morning and one County in the afternoon and I was finished the one in Fulton County at nine 45. And at 10 30, I was at the winning when I can, because you're everywhere by the internet. So you can be much more mobile. You can get a lot more done,

Melissa Gragg: 10:10

But you bring up a good point that if you give people the option of doing like a zoo, you know, because not every case is so complex and they still, you know, if you gave people the option of saying you can do zoom and you can have a trial in July or you do in person and your trials, not till December, you're going to have a ton of people that do that. I, my concern though is also for just the court system in general. Um, you know, like I get clients that are calling me all the time and they're like a divorce court's going to open up soon and we're going to file and we need to get ready. And I'm thinking, okay, the court's not really close. Like what are some misconceptions that people have right now that, that things are closed and as Georgia divorce courts close right now, or can you file divorce papers like right now?

Randy Kessler: 11:07

Yeah. You made me think of stuff that I'm not going to forget it. Okay. But I'm actually, I'm gonna say it before. I forget it. You know, I never thought about this until just now that you made me think of this most, you know, courts sometimes cancel and then you got to reschedule and come back. And sometimes the courts put four or five cases down because they are afraid. They're afraid they'll get to work. The judge will get to work and the case will settle and they won't have anything to do. And the taxpayers are paying them. So they have two, three, four cases get ready. Sometimes judges say, can you be a backup case? And so my case settles, you guys can come down here and a few hours, I'm now guessing or prognosticating. The courts will allow us to be on zoom, backup saying, if you really need a hearing soon, I don't have any time for the next six weeks. But if you will to be available two hours notice when one of my cases settles, I will email everybody. And if you all can jump on a camera, we can get it done. And you can fill in my two hours that I found available from 10 o'clock till noon. So that's another benefit. I didn't think about that. I'm sorry to,

Melissa Gragg: 12:09

Oh yeah. I mean, I think the scheduling is going to be amazing because right now, I don't know about your court system, but right now, like we could all be ready to go to start court. And then somebody comes in and they get back into chambers and they have to have a conversation. And we're on pause. And half the time we're sitting around being like, does anybody know when we're

Randy Kessler: 12:31

And you're billing the poor client who has to pay for that. Now you don't have to worry about that. The client can get a better bang for their buck. No, court's over at 10, no driving home, no talking to the client in the hallway, no running into your friends and having to charge the client because you can't get home to do your other work. Um, none of those issues,

Melissa Gragg: 12:55

High net worth divorces, I mean, usually are complex, right? Because there's a lot of things going on, but not always are they con like sometimes it's just big dollars. It may not be huge complexity. It could have been that they settled most of the issues prior. Right? We won't work hard to settle it, but it's like one thing that they can't come to agreement either it's maintenance or a child custody issue,

Randy Kessler: 13:23

You're hitting the nail on the head, you know? And sometimes people just need to be heard. And look, we've had that. We've had a, a professional athlete and there was a$40 million state. And the first mediation we settled 20, 24 mediations later, we got everything done except for one who made the decision and extracurriculars. And we had to have a hearing on that because they just couldn't reach that last agreement. Sometimes people need to be heard and they need someone to put their foot down. And if you can just get 30 minutes with a judge who will look at them and say, you guys can fight about this, but this is what I'm going to do. You can either go settle it. Or you can argue for the next two hours, but you better have something better than what your lawyer has told me. You have, and know that kind of pretrial conference thing. It's more effective when you really see the judge and hear from the judge and your client can see too. And the judge can have more of an effect wearing the rogue saying, Oh, here I'll be fair, but you better have better evidence than just, you know, um, what ms. Greg told me is the evidence in this case, because if that's the evidence you're going to get what they're offering and I'm not gonna order anymore.

Melissa Gragg: 14:24

Right. Right. No, I agree.

Randy Kessler: 14:26

You know, you asked me if the courts are closing. Um, and I didn't mean to skirt that I just didn't want to forget my answer to the other thing. They never closed. We always had courts open first. There were some, some, you know, judges that were on the forefront of the cutting edge that said, let's do a conference call. And we've been doing conference calls for years. Let's put a camera on and do it by zoom or FaceTime or Google duo. Well, now they're passing rules. Georgia just passed a superior court rule that allows hearings, not final trials, but hearings by zoom. Um, so even if you don't agree, judges can make you do that. So it's happening. So people that call you me that say, well, I guess the courts are opening. Can we get a divorce? Now you could have gotten a divorce last week. You might not have gotten a final trial yet, but how many cases actually go to final trial? Anyway, the work you're doing, the valuation stuff that's going on. Anyway, the lawyering, the negotiating, the posturing, the gathering, the information that's going on. Final trials are always in the distant future. Anyway, we don't wait to file a case until we know we have a court date. You file what somebody needs a divorce and you hope you get a court date soon. And sometimes it takes two years. Sometimes it takes two months, not much difference here, except the final trial. Someone wants to delay it. They could probably put it off for a while, but sooner or later, the judge is going to get wind of it and say, you know what, we're getting on a camera and we're going to get this thing done

Melissa Gragg: 15:44

Well, and that's what I feel like could be one of the issues is if you know, like let's say, I don't really want to get divorced. And so now we're all on camera. We're at trial and Oh, Oh, Oh, I can't hear you. Or, Oh, my camera's not working. Or, you know, in some cases I've even heard attorneys say, we're concerned about who else is in the room, because you don't know if, if right now I have an audience of 10 people in the room, or if it's just me and, and what if I just am, am sick of, you know, cause everybody just gets at the, at the time that you actually get to trial, everybody is sick of the process, right? The clients are done. And what if they're on camera and you have one client that's, that's like fakes basically that they don't have good internet or they, their, my computer died. You know, that's the only thing that I see as a real issue in stopping some of the process.

Randy Kessler: 16:42

But, you know, there are fixes for that. I had a client that had a, you know, a heart attack in court and, you know, judge thought he was faking it. I don't know if he was taking it up to the ambulance, came and took him out. He was a doctor faced with going to jail. So same concept. You know, people can do the same stuff, but sooner or later, the truth does come out. And people that do that kind of stuff get found out. And do you really want to be the person that gets caught doing that? If you get caught doing that and they have an it expert come out and prove that you're in it, it was working fine. Then you're really risking a lot. It's not, it's not necessarily worth the risk to some people, but you know, maybe the other thing is the feedback, you know, there's something different. How did my argument affect the judge? Did I see the other side wins? I didn't get to see how the other side's reacting because I didn't see their face on the screen while I was talking. It makes me think one thing that probably will never be successful on zoom is standup comedy. You don't know if the audience is laughing, right? You tell a joke and you think you're playing to an empty room. So, uh, give me feedback.

Melissa Gragg: 17:43

That was one of the, um, questions that I had is, you know, I think what everybody is, is concerned about it. And I hear this from divorce attorneys and these online trials, it's about the psychology of the trial process. You know, we go in there and it's a performance for all intents and purposes. Now, when we see each other in the hallways, I know all the other experts, I know all the attorneys, I know the judges. And so to you, and we're all like, Hey, what's going on? What's going on in the client center? And we're like, I will see you in court. You know? And for me, the psychology is watching the judge, right. I don't necessarily care how hard an attorney comes from me because, and half the time, I'm not even looking at them, like I'm just looking at the judge. And like, if I see that face or the, you know, it's usually the furrowed brow that I'm like, okay, I need to say it again in another way. Um, but I think that that's what is going to be hard for some people. It's just that it, especially if you've done your whole career having kind of a litigation process, you know,

Randy Kessler: 18:58

You're right. I mean, you bring up two points. One is, you know, we're all self aware. Maybe judges that make for a browse or roll their eyes will see themselves and say, Oh, I shouldn't do that. And maybe Laura's will see, Oh, my ties at CRA you know, we should become more self aware. But what you're saying is absolutely right. I mean, clients pay me and you to tell their story. You know, they've lived this horrible life. They've been a victim for the last 30 years. They paid us a lot of money to March into court and explained to the judge what's been done to them. And I've got to put on the show and I've got to do it authentically, but they want their lawyer to be impressive. They want the order to be well dressed. They want the Lord to have the best computer, the best staff, the best arguments, the best written briefs. And you lose some of that on zoom. And what about younger? Laura's may have the advantage. Young littler has a better internet connection or knows how to manipulate the process and knows how to get the ring lights that they're lit up better than the other side. Who's in a dark room because they don't want their spouse to hear. And they're in the basement. You know, there are a whole bunch of different issues. Um, people that are more comfortable on camera, like on social media, the tic talkers may rule the world. The best litigators may be the best tic talkers of you know, of today. So it's a change, it's an evolution. But you know, and we started this talking about my law school class and I had to encourage them and make them not feel so bad. And I told them, when I came out of law school, there was a whole new evidence code. So I started with the new evidence code, but the older lawyers were upset. They had to learn all the new statutes and the new numbers they're coming out of law school today. Granted, the job market is harder, but they know how to use technology. And I'm an older lawyer. And if I have a young lawyer that knows how to make sure my zoom works and everything else goes flawlessly, and then they're not weirded out by having to try a whole case electronically. They've got an advantage over their opponents. I mean, it's, it's something new and it is new litigation like it or not. I mean, it's here to stay. It's more efficient. And then you start counting the benefits. If you're in government, if you're in the judicial system, if you're a court administrator, wow, I don't need the bail to be there today because nobody's in person. I don't have to worry about this family violence case, where we've got to keep the parties separated. I don't have to worry about someone getting lost in traffic and us having to start late. I mean, there are all these good reasons from a court administrative perspective to do virtual hearings and virtual trials and virtual conferences. It's just, you know, the more you think about it, the more you start to realize, why haven't we been doing this all along? Granted, there wasn't the technology. You couldn't have the flawless video and it's gonna get better. Right. Five G 67 G. It's going to be real time.

Melissa Gragg: 21:34

Well, and I think that even, I mean, if you look at zoom, if you look at go to meeting or any of those, we could have all of the cameras, but you could also be sharing your screen. And instead of everybody looking for exhibit 54 or 23, then they can look for, you can just say, here's the exhibit. You know, like from, from my standpoint as an expert witness, it's going to be phenomenal because instead of saying, you know, what number are they looking at on the sheet? Right. I can point exactly to it like a whiteboard. I can highlight things. I mean, all of that stuff, people didn't do as much because it was like laborious to even have that available.

Randy Kessler: 22:19

Yeah. Imagine the quote from the deposition that you want to show to everybody, not just as it easier, it is more impressive. And I'll tell you a quick story. We had a jury trial against Evander Holyfield years ago and he had, it was his best year. And he was making, he made$40 million in two different fights. And the courtroom had just inventor just bought this thing called an Elmo. Nobody knew what it was and they just put in screens. And this was jury trial. So things, you put something on the screen. And all of a sudden it shows up on 12 jurors screens on each witnesses screen above the judge, above the witness. And we put his income from his budget on the Elmo. And all of a sudden it was in everybody's face. And this is the same thing you want to make sure somebody sees something criminal trials, talk about a little smoking gun. You know, jury's crane, their head was that the gun when they pull the gun out of the paper and they show it and the tag of exhibit 45 eight, well, you put that right here. I mean, you're actually looking at the thing that killed somebody. You're looking at the document. You're looking at the paycheck. You're looking at a W2 where the guy makes more money in a month than anybody in the room makes in 10 years. And how much, how much more powerful can you get met?

Melissa Gragg: 23:33

And I think it's going to be, you know, literally it's going to take people practicing. It's going to take people testing this out and kind of being forced to, in my mind, this change happening probably three to five years sooner than I expected, you know? So I saw it coming and I think we all saw it company. It had to, but this crisis and this time is kind of creating it's that, that we have to do it now. Perception is other thing, just like you said, your clients see, you know, so if I'm fumbling around and I don't know what, what is a camera over here as a CA you know, like that kind of stuff it's going to not look great on me as in a jury with a jury or a judge, you know, so you're going to, but I think that that's what we do anyway. We practice, you know, like practice what we, you can watch somebody get up into like the, um, the expert box or whatever the testifying box. And if they're, you know, like in, in one of the counties that I work at, the, the chairs don't move, right. So if they go and try to pull the chair or they can't get in, they've never been there. Like, that's my sign of like, Oh, is this your first time? Okay, let's have some fun, you know, but I think it's going to take practice. I think the younger generation may not have the experience of law, but they have the experience of technology. But even in the courts, I think that the courts are going to need, you know, we've kind of converted to audio recording instead of having like a court reporter, really typing things all the time. Not all courts are like that, but I can see that the judge has now like a technology person that facilitates those, that, you know, cause zoom, you can have rooms like you, you're doing mediation. You can put people in rooms, like go talk to your people. Um, so it can be fast. The technology is there. It's just that like it. Where do you see divorce litigation in the future, six months or a year? Do you see them actually changing or do you see them kind of like, Oh, let's go back to how it was. I see

Randy Kessler: 25:49

50, I see 50% or more being virtual. You know, we've already had judges that would pick up the phone and say, let's have a conference call, which is very similar to what we're doing now. Um, and I'm also very fortunate of our 15. Laura is only three of us are over 50 years old. So these young words, you know, and we debate internally, you know, maybe some trade secrets being disclosed here, but you know, we have this internal debate. Do we demand that Laura's be in the office and have FaceTime and their present, or do we look at the hours that they're working in, see how much they build and say, what do we care if they're getting the work done? Um, and it's not just video. It's also your cell phone is your office phone, you know, phone VoIP, phones that transfer from your office, volunteer cell phone. So, you know, we're ready for this and people, lawyers that not getting, you know, older, the younger generations coming in and they're taking over. I don't see how we're going to be able to resist that tidal wave of, you know, why should I drive down to the courthouse and risk, getting a flat and pay the toll on the highway and get in traffic and pay for gas, charge my client for the travel time client. Would you rather stay home and turn on your computer at nine o'clock and be ready for the hearing? Or would you rather meet me at seven 30 to make sure we're there on time? And I know you find the courthouse correctly and it's the same courthouse. Yes. There are criminal trials going on in that same courthouse. Do you still want to meet me there or would you rather do it virtually and to take us to further, and we've got our, we're building our own courtroom in our office so that we can have private trials or private zoom trials to avoid them, even when it has to go to court. You know what I mean? It's just, I think the future is January from the courthouse and getting away from the in-person appearance at the courthouse.

Melissa Gragg: 27:23

Well, I think that's, uh, that's a good segue. Cause I was like, how do we get prepared to do online divorce? And that is, you know, like during this time of change, I like to call it a time of change. Um, during this time of change, we've had to internally replicate everything. So we can do this at home. We can do this at work, you know, and, and we have duplicates of everything. And I think that your idea of kind of replicating the cause you need, you need no background, you know, like you need everything. I was doing a lot of zoom calls at my home office and I was like, you guys get to see a lot about me here. Maybe I should stop that. But,

Randy Kessler: 28:11

Well, we're still, I mean, we're still a legal system and people have a lot of it is image and expectation and people are scared and they get confidence when they come into a Laura's office who looks like a lawyer and acts like Lauren talks like Lauren has law books. Now the truth is I could do just a good job as good a job thinking about a case sitting on the beach. And well, maybe not, maybe it'd be a little distracted, but the point is your lawyers and your experts, and you've got to act like them and you've got to feel like them and clients have to have confidence in you. So yeah, we can replicate it. I think, you know, virtual backgrounds are still not there yet. I think there's still, they're not perfect, but they'll get there where the virtual background looks like. You're really in a courtroom where it looks like you're really in your office. Um, but I agree that you have to have a good background. You can't have the dog walking across your mouth while you're charging somebody$500 an hour to give them advice. So you still have to do it and do it right. But, um, for us, we're going to have a big courtroom. That's going to have social distancing and have screens. So if somebody can't make it there, their screen will be on the table and it'll look like they're in court with us. So that's sort of what we're doing to be still real, you know, physical office lawyers.

Melissa Gragg: 29:22

That's probably the most brilliant thing that I've heard. I mean, during this time, this is all brilliant, but that is really like, you have to, for those of us who are used to trial situations, right. For the young people, they're going to be like, what you guys actually together, you know, like, they're going to forget about this, but for us, I think having it still similar, like, cause you get in the zone and you get your mind, right? Like, okay, this is, but it's also ease of

Randy Kessler: 29:53

We're putting the flags up. We have the seal of the great state of Georgia, that form of judges a bench is raised. So it feels the reasons the court rooms are built formerly and make you feel a sense of you better whisper. You better not act up. This is a revered place. And you know, this is someone's life and it's harder to negotiate and advocate and litigate about someone's life. When everyone's sitting in the living room, maybe in their pajamas. I mean, there's gotta be some civilian, some seriousness to it. So, uh, for those cases that were fired

Melissa Gragg: 30:25

Efficiency though, I mean, it's efficiency. It's, you know, if we have it set up that we can just come, you sit down, there's a computer there, you know, everything is there. You can easily use it. You're not, Oh, I'm pulling my computer from my office and going, you know, like if you make it easy for people, I think that's where they're going to be. But also, you know, one of the things that I didn't, I didn't know if you guys are doing a lot of, but what has kept me super busy lately is that even if people were in and I've seen this start to happen for a while, but, um, you know, I have seen people be more open. Um, even if they're in litigation, there's a lot of pseudo mediation that we're doing, you know, we're negotiating, we're going back and forth. We're trying to educate, you know, and what the reality, if you want a million dollars of maintenance and your husband only makes 200,000, you're not going to get it. You know, like it's educated, but do you think that there's going to be more divorce mediation or a collaborative divorce as people are going to be more open to it because they don't want to deal with the court system. Right?

Randy Kessler: 31:39

I don't want to give this virus any credit and say anything good about it. But the fact that the courts are not allowing final trials yet. And I think a final trial is too much to do by video means people have to use alternative dispute resolution. You have no choice. I mean, it used to be, courts are busy, it's expensive. Let's see if mediation might work. Let's push mediation a little bit now. I mean, if you want to result fast, you want to get divorced. And people want to get divorced more often because they want to move on with their life then because they want more money. It's pushing people more to mediation, but it's easier to do mediation. It's easier to schedule it now. I mean, just, you know, I want to take a lunch break. Okay. I'll be back in five minutes. You know what not, I'm going to take the elevator, go downstairs, go, you know, I want to take a cigarette break. Okay. I'm smoking a cigarette. It's my house. I can smoke a cigarette. It's not courthouse rules. I think mediation is absolutely I'm taking leaps and bounds. But again, just like we talked earlier, Melissa, there's something about being a person. And there's some cases that just are not going to work as well by zoom. You just need that touchy, feely. And sometimes in divorce, what I experienced a lot is it sometimes the husband or the wife will tell everybody I want to go talk to my spouse. I don't want anybody else around. It's been 12 hours, two o'clock in the morning. I'm going to go put my foot down and we're going to get this thing done and we're going to compromise it. You know, you sort of lose that. Although I could put them in a room, get a room. But, uh, so there's a balance. There's, you know, nothing's perfect if, if it was that good and it was perfect, we certainly would have been doing it all before now. So we're wrestling with the cost benefit analysis. And I, I think, you know, like we say, necessity is the mother of invention. If there's no other way to resolve it, but as zoom mediation, I've had that conversation four or five times in the last two weeks, you got a choice. You can wait until the courts reopen. We can try this.

Melissa Gragg: 33:30

Yeah. There's something to be said about, you know, we know that there's a huge amount of cases that get settled on the courtroom steps. You know, everybody finally gets to that point and they're like, Oh, this is serious. I'm going to court. I'm gonna finally give on that stupid issue that I had. You know, I had a problem with the dog or something. You know what I'm saying? They're like, okay, this is serious because it is so difficult for Clients to go to court to testify in court. If you've never testified in court or been in that situation, it is terrifying and very difficult emotionally, physically, things like that. Whereas I think that what we will see is, you know, but there's still maybe an outstanding issue. Well, again, you're getting it to the point where one outstanding issue is not that difficult to deal with online, um, on an online trial, as opposed to an entire trial. But I think that this time period has really helped people start to, again, I say, they're doing mediation, they're really in litigation. They're just more willing to facilitate, you know, we work for both parties. Sometimes this is a great situation because I can get them in the room and say, you know, I know that you think this, but this is the reality, you know, I don't, I'm not for either one of you. It's the reality.

Randy Kessler: 34:56

Yeah. I mean, Melissa, when you look at it this way, when I talked to my client, your choices stay married for six months until this thing passes or do a virtual mediation. I mean, it makes it a little simple, you know, uh, okay. I, I I'd rather get divorced and deal with all the technology. People are terrified of technology. I'd rather wait, I just don't want to do technology. You want to stay married. You want to make, you want to stay in the same house because there's no temporary support issue. Okay. I'll try mediation. So people will give in. Um, and it would be shocking. I think, like you said, Laura's are late adopters. It's very rare that Laura's are leading the way in technology, but two, three, four years from now, we're going to say, why did it take a virus to get us here? You know, this is where we should be.

Melissa Gragg: 35:41

Well, and you have younger judges, you have every, you know, everybody's continuing. But, um, you know, I think that it will continue to change. I think that what I'm seeing a little bit with clients is just an apprehension for how long they're going to have to wait, you know? And so in the meantime, once they understand that if they came up with a settlement, it's going to be much easier to get that into, you know, read into the court transcripts or anything online now, you know, or in the next six months, I think that they would take, um, a different decision, but there's a lot of people. And this is, you know, I th uh, maybe one of our last questions, but there's a lot of people that are kind of like, you know, should I wait, would I get a better situation if I wait, or should I get it done now? Because I don't know how bad it's going to be. You know, a lot of business owners want to just get divorced right now. Cause they think that this is the worst it could possibly be. Okay. But I don't, you know, I, I, I do see that. Or do you see people just kind of let's forge ahead? Who cares? Cause we don't like each other.

Randy Kessler: 36:56

I think people are going to just move forward. They're going to have no choice, but to move forward. It's just really, it comes down to the pressure of staying married. They came to us to get them out of this relationship, to get them out of this relationship, requires adapting and doing something new. And that's just what they're going to have to do. I don't think there's really much of a choice. I just don't see an alternative. You know, I know that old joke, why is divorce so expensive because it's worth it. And it carries some weight and some meaning there, you know, people want to get to the end. And you know, there are people that have described it as getting out of jail. You know, I joke that I call myself a freedom warrior. Sometimes, you know, people say, I'm paying you to get me out of jail. And I said, what'd you do? And I say, well, I just, I feel like I'm in jail. And so you'll do whatever you can to get out of jail. You'll do whatever you can to get out of a miserable situation. And I don't think the problems presented by new technology are so bad that people would stay in the relationships that they've paid thousands of dollars to a complete stranger to help them get out. It's just the math doesn't add up.

Melissa Gragg: 37:56

It's time to go. It's time to leave. Well, thank you so much for coming onto valuation podcast.com. Um, I always enjoy talking to you. Um, we've, we've met in the past. I've interviewed you in the past for other reasons,

Randy Kessler: 38:11

Missing you at these NACVA conferences, the seminars and the in person meetings, which we will get back to.

Melissa Gragg: 38:15

We'll get back to it. Okay. Well you have a great great day and we'll talk to you soon. Thanks, Randy.