Having practiced law for 35 years, believe me many attorney's especially domestic law are professional billers. I don't practice domestic, but have warned many of my friends to be very very careful because these folks are billing machines. A little inside info for example....."2.5 hours to prepare Interrogatories" The truth? The interrogatories are canned documents. The law clerk copies and pastes the interrogatories from another case and just changes the names of the parties, the case number and court, and dates. Takes about 20 minutes but bill it out at 2 to three hours. Letters? Same way. All the same standard BS in the letters, and then bill out 75 minutes on something that took 3 minutes to copy, paste, change names. If you actually think this stuff is crafted specifically for your case you are sadly mistaken. Most of them take a class at their firm when they start on how to bill hours. I am not kidding. IMO it is disgusting which is why I only work on contingency cases. If you don't get paid? I don't get paid. And even then, I feel bad sometimes about how much the fee is in relation to the work done, so I discount things dramatically quite often because 1) I can afford to and 2) what goes around comes around when you treat people fairly that's why my phone rings off the hook. Bottom line just get out of the mess as quick as possible. You will be bent over. Accept it and when it is done, you will be a very happy man. So many of my friend's (divorce lawyer) client's told him when it was all done and they were living in some crappy basement apartment somewhere after being hosed by the B**tch, it didn't matter. To a man they all said they were so, so , so ,so happy living in someone's basement and free of the ogre. Be forewarned - you escaped. Do not ever get married again!