I have a divorce case ongoing for 2 months in California. I filed the petition myself and got my friend to serve papers. Then I hired a lawyer to help with the case, I had only onemeeting with the lawyer for 1 hour, and 5 emails and 2 quick phone calls. I prepared all my financial account information (bank statements) and prepared draft preliminary disclosures. The lawyer only did some minor edits and clarifications and sent it over to the other party, and charged many hours for every back and forth revision / phone calls.

I feel like I could have done all of this myself, the lawyer has charged me $4000 so far for this work. There is not a huge amount of contention in my divorce case yet. No kids, same amount of income so no alimony. However I own a house which I bought 2 years ago (marriage lasted 4 years). There is some small amount of separate property we invested into the house. There may be some disagreement about the fate of the house. I want to buy out the equity share of my spouse. I can easily afford the mortgage myself, but don't want to refinance it because the monthly payments will go up a lot due to higher interest rates.

Every email and phone call gets charged with the lawyer, and the communication with other party is super slow because her lawyer doesn't respond either. I don't see how this is helping, I would much rather prep the papers and send them myself. If I need I'll schedule paid consultation with the lawyers I will do that. I can call and talk to her much more easily. She has expressed interest in getting mediation lawyer which will be cheaper.