At Linda MacElree Esquire, LLC, we are dedicated to helping clients with their family law challenges. Linda L. MacElree believes that it is important to have an attorney who concentrates in the area of family law and who practices in the county where the attorney’s office is located. Clients need to understand and consider when he/she chooses an attorney, that the client will pay, among other things, not only for phone calls, emails, correspondence, meetings, preparation of documents, preparation for hearing and the time spent in court, but also for the attorney’s travel time to and from the attorney’s office to meetings with opposing counsel and for travel time to and from any court appearances in the county where the action is filed.
If the attorney’s office is located in Philadelphia and the action is filed in Chester County, each time there is a court appearance or meeting with the spouse’s attorney, the client will pay at the attorney’s hourly rate from the time the attorney leaves his/her Philadelphia office until the attorney returns to the Philadelphia office. Hiring a Philadelphia attorney for a Chester County case may add an average of three extra hours or more of the Philadelphia attorney’s billing rate for each meeting or court appearance held in Chester County.
Although attorneys are licensed to practice in all counties in Pennsylvania, local knowledge regarding the local court system is vital to an understanding of how the fact finder may apply the law to the client’s unique facts. Unless an attorney frequently or regularly litigates cases in Chester County, that attorney will not be familiar with the local rules and practices. Local knowledge is essential to the assessment and strategy of each client’s case.
Lynn’s office is located directly across from the Chester County Justice Center, and she is familiar with the Court of Common Pleas of Chester County’s processes and procedures. Lynn confines her family law practice to only Chester County cases.
After 30 years of concentrating in family law, Lynn has a wealth of knowledge regarding family law matters in Chester County and has had cases with many Chester County family law attorneys and had hearings and trials with all the Chester County support masters, custody conciliators, equitable distribution masters and family court judges.