English speaking lawyers

Does anyone have any experience of any good lawyers who can at least understand English? I have been here for 10 years, and can understand perfectly well spoken or written German, can talk fairly fluently, but cannot write it myself.

I am in need of a lawyer (somewhere in the Köln area if poss), who can help me through a likely divorce.

Any help most appreciated,
Maaph

Just a comment to say that, in my experience, most lawyers can at least understand english, written or spoken. But I think most of it comes from the level of education, not directly with the job.
However, they are obviously very careful to be within the law, so they are not happy about making 'casual' translations as they go along. When we were buying our house in Germany my wife was handling most of it, because she is German. When it came to signing papers with the house-seller I was asked by the lawyer in perfect english: "Do you understand enough German so that we can continue today? Otherwise we will need to get an official translator and that will take us some time to organise". In other words, he could do it himself, but he didn't want the bother of doing it 'off the cuff'. I replied in english that I got the 'jist' of most things and I was happy to sign on that basis. So we just got on with the rest of the meeting in German!

Divorces are obviously much deeper and have lots of consequences if you don't understand any of the implications. But I think you should be able to find a lawyer with english - german translation skills quite easily.

Cheers alien, you're probably right .. what is concerning me is me getting stuffed because the lawyer literally doesn't understand my position. I know this is going to happen anyway, but it is more a question of damage limitation.

be careful, as lawyers are open to corruption in my part of NRW, as my husband has found out to his detriment.

that makes me feel so much better