Your choice of lawyer can play an important part in determining how your separation unfolds. Many lawyers are quite open to negotiation, mediation and collaborative negotiation, while a few others see litigation as the only sensible means of resolving a dispute, particularly lawyers who have a reputation as being "bulldogs." Other lawyers tend not to take their duty to respond promptly to correspondence particularly seriously, which will delay things and may result in an unnecessarily large number of interim applications. Still other lawyers see their duty as militantly carrying out their clients' instructions, without supplying much in the way of options or sensible advice as to the likely effect of those instructions.

While some people, particularly those in angry separations, feel an almost irresistible urge to go out and hire the toughest lawyer around to exact revenge against their former partner, bulldog lawyers usually see only two options for resolving a legal dispute: a settlement on exactly the unreasonable, extortionate terms their client demands; or, a knock-down, drag-'em-out fight at a twenty-day. These lawyers cost the most, and you can expect the litigation process to drag out for an ungodly amount of time, with absolutely no guarantee of a better result than what you would have had if you'd taken a different, less antagonistic approach. (In fact, my informal observation is that the success rate of bulldog lawyers is actually lower than that of lawyers known to be reasonable and take a pragmatic approach to their clients' disputes. They're certainly more expensive, but they're no more successful.)