Michigan Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog
In part 1 of this article, I began reviewing how my in-depth understanding of recovery, and the various way people do, in fact, recover from alcohol (and drug) problems gives me a decided advantage as a Michigan driver’s license restoration lawyer, to the point that my office guarantees to win every first time license restoration and clearance case we take. Our overview began with a discussion on the importance of examining a person’s relationship with alcohol in the context of DUI cases, and particularly 2nd offense cases. Here, in part 2, we’re going to shift that focus to recovery, and how that is central to success in a driver’s license appeal case.
When someone contacts me about a license restoration or clearance appeal, the first thing I want to know is the last time he or she had a drink. There is no way to overstate this: proving you have quit drinking for a sufficient period of time and have the commitment and tools to remain alcohol-free is the absolute key to winning a driver’s license appeal. Nothing else matters without sobriety.
This is where a lot of people, including lawyers, get lost – right at the part about having the “commitment and tools” to stay sober. Pretty much everyone in the world is familiar with AA, but unfortunately, that’s also just about all most people know about recovery. For a long time, AA was the only game in town. Before AA, the only way to address alcohol problems was what we now call the “moral model,” where the hope was a person could be shamed into not drinking anymore, or somehow “prayed” into recovery. Not surprisingly, that didn’t work.
In a very real way, I seemed to have overlooked the recovery aspect, probably because it’s so central to who I am and the work I do. To be sure, my articles about sobriety leave no doubt that my understanding of the development, diagnosis, treatment of, and recovery from alcohol and drug problems runs very deep, and goes miles beyond the legal aspects involved in winning a license appeal. Having completed a post-graduate program of addiction studies, I bring a healthy measure of clinical knowledge unmatched by any other lawyer I know.
I cannot say this enough: sobriety is the absolute first requirement for winning a license appeal. This means that you have to prove to the state that you are sober before anything else. We’ll see this as we examine the main rule governing license appeals later, in this installment. Beyond that, it does not matter how long a person has been without a license, or how long it’s been since he or she last got into any trouble. In fact, it doesn’t matter if a person has won a Nobel Prize in the meantime: until he or she can demonstrate that he or she has quit drinking and has the commitment and tools to remain alcohol-free, the Michigan Secretary of State (SOS) won’t even consider granting his or her driver’s license restoration or clearance appeal.
Let’s start with the lawyers. There are too many of them so hungry for cases that they compete with each other by cutting prices down to the bone, and, for fear of losing a potential customer, will simply nod and agree with everything a potential client says. A good lawyer should be upfront and explain that a stupid idea won’t fly, not just take someone’s money and try it anyway. More than anything else, that’s the sign of a lawyer desperate for work. Remember, too, that every Judge out there has already heard every excuse in the book 10 times over, and won’t be easily fooled.
In the real world, you can count on a person facing an OWI charge insisting they don’t drink a lot, or they don’t drink that often, and so on. It’s normal for people to “hurt” after a DUI, no matter how it came about. Because of this, a person picked up for drunk driving will automatically try and do some damage control relative to his or her drinking. The truth, however, is that even if a person hardly ever drinks, that misses the point. While it’s easy to think of a drinking problem in terms of frequent over-indulgence, or the “need” to drink regularly, those things are markers of just one kind of drinking problem.
I am rather uniquely qualified to examine this topic, having both a legal and clinical background. For everything we’re going to go over in these installments, the bottom line is that sometimes, a person facing a DUI charge just needs someone to talk to, while other times, they need someone to really “talk” to them. Unfortunately, the path of least resistance for any lawyer handling DUI cases is to simply agree when a client says, as most do, things like they don’t drink much, or often, or otherwise aren’t “big drinkers.” Ultimately, it fails the client when a lawyer is too afraid to disagree, and instead follows the salesperson’s strategy that “the customer is always right.”
I’ve had a guarantee to win every case I take longer than most of these websites has been around. Beyond me, there is a very small circle of bona-fide license appeal lawyers scattered across the state, all of whom have been practicing for 20 years or more. Any one of us in this little group has forgotten more than all these Johnny-come-lately, copy-cat operations will ever know about license restorations. Although these newbies try and make it look like license reinstatement issues are the focus of their practice, as I noted, there are rather few of us who truly concentrate in this field. Unlike most of my other “informational” articles, this one will be a piece of shameless self-promotion, so hold on…
It may sound corny, but it begins with the simple proposition that, in my professional life I always try to treat others as I would wish to be treated if I was on the other side of the transaction. If there’s one thing I absolutely HATE when I’m the consumer, it’s any kind of BS or evasiveness surrounding cost. When I call a business, I expect to be able to get a price, unless it’s for something like a repair job, where a technician has to first diagnose the problem, but even then, there is no good reason to not be able to at least provide a “ballpark” figure. I won’t accept less.
As we set off, I’d ask the reader to think for a moment about all the celebrities who make the headlines for something like a DUI or an assault and battery charge. This is a fairly regular part of the news stream. For the most part, the public is more interested in the fact that So-and-So was arrested for something, rather than following the case as it winds along. Unless someone really well-known goes to prison for years on end for some horrible crime, people tend to have lost interest, when, 4 or 5 months later, So-and-So gets a year probation and 100 hours of community service for a DUI, or punching some photographer.
For everything we’re going to discuss, the bottom line is that you either hire a lawyer who is charismatic, persuasive and inspires confidence – or not. And why would anyone choose “or not?” In my own life, I much prefer to deal with someone who is genuine and interesting, rather than endure boring, politically correct blandness. In the role of lawyer, it’s far better if a person presents him or herself clearly, and with real “feeling.”