While the days of cloning judges to follow people around and dispense perfect judgments may not be far off we are stuck, at least temporarily, with an imperfect system. For the mathematically inclined you can view the essence of the system as a one dimensional string cutting through a three dimensional swatch of reality with many points of light representing individual cases scattered in a chaotic randomness around the string. The objective of the justice system would be to obtain the minimal possible summated distance between all the points and the string. That’s the closest I can come to describing it for anyone who wants to mathematically model justice. I stopped taking math classes after getting a D in Real Analysis.
 
   As a typical client you will be concerned only with the distance in your point of light (aka case). However, the reality of the situation is that your lawyer performs the role of equating your point into the string. The string is all knowing and wise. It has devised various rules and conventions to ensure the distance is kept to a minimum. This will inevitably cause you, the client, grief and panic. I have seen psychological evaluations of people in traumatic litigation describing them as believing their lives are controlled by forces outside their control, which being a well ederkated lawyer I know is a hall-mark of psychological syndromes. 

   Having practiced law for a small amount of time I now chuckle inwardly at such naively obvious observations being one of the primary puppet masters. If a client every completely understands and accepts this they will have gone a long way towards both Zen Enlightenment and dealing with life. 

   When a client identifies a problem with the other side in order to send the great and mighty legal system into action I must almost always do two things. First, I must identify some prior written statement within a recognized source of law identify the problem as one addressable by the law and bring it in loosely correct format before a court. Second, I must produce admissible evidence proving said problem exists. 

   The first is rarely a problem but takes time. Courts minimize the resources they expend by requiring that problems be categorized and placed before them in a rough queue. The second competent admissible evidence requires much more work. 

      Someone’s familiarity with their spouses works against understanding the process. Courts don’t know your relationship. Courts prefer concrete statements or acts by the opposing party testified to by a disinterested neutral. Failing that testimony by both parties which the court will weigh in some sort of coin flip as to credibility. Courts have institutionalized a rule called hearsay that you cannot testify to what someone else said, but need to bring them in person. This drives people crazy but makes a lot of sense. Think about how you judge characters on television. Imagine that process determining your future. Does it seem to have the potential to be random, unpredictable and shallow? As a lawyer I will attempt to minimize the effects of that process. Unfortunately, while I can give a very well educated guess at what will happen, I can’t tell you for certain. I’ve heard “but it’s not right” more times and in more ways than I can count. 

   As a lawyer, if I don’t give you a straight answer as to the reality of your situation you will never be able to find your way out of it, if indeed you are interested in doing so. Sometimes I will be wrong. That’s the nature of the process, but part of lawyering is to recognize the danger of such and make sure mistakes are within a margin of error.