Michigan Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog
I always hesitate to write about legal fees because when doing so, it’s very difficult to avoid creating a perception of self-interest that borders on greed. In this article, I’ll do my best to be diplomatic and provide some general pointers that apply to just about anyone, anywhere, looking to hire a lawyer for something like a DUI, driver’s license restoration, or criminal case, although most of what I’ll cover here is universal enough to apply to legal areas beyond those just listed.
My experience can be helpful in guiding someone who is about to become a consumer of legal services. What finally got me typing this piece occurred after numerous emails and calls to my office where one of the first things a person asks is some variation of “how much do you charge?” This all but guarantees that a person is using the wrong criteria to find a lawyer. Whatever else, you definitely won’t find the right lawyer by asking the wrong questions.
When a person’s first concern is cost, it’s almost always because he or she is looking for a “deal” on a lawyer, and is using price as the primary basis for their hiring decision. In many situations (and in my practice areas), that’s about as wrong a method for picking a lawyer as you could get. I understand not being able to pay for what you simply cannot afford, but there are plenty of legal predicaments where a person would be much better off borrowing money to get the best help possible, rather than looking for some kind of price “deal.”
The whole issue of location is easy to bring up, but quite a bit harder to explain, because it must be done diplomatically. Everybody knows that some courts are tougher than others, and that Judges can be all over the map in terms of being lenient or not. No lawyer, including me, wants to disparage any Judge, or in any way play “favorites.” Our job is to work with them, day-in and day-out. It’s a given that, in the privacy of a lawyer’s conference room, a client might hear that this Judge is a “teddy bear,” and that one is a “hard-a$$,” but not in an article like this.
Let’s begin with those who really “get it.” These people understand that no one quits drinking because it’s working out so well. They decide to “put the plug in the jug,” to borrow a phrase, because alcohol has just brought too much drama and trouble to their lives. This realization comes like getting smacked upside the head for the millionth time. When this happens, these individuals look back and wonder how they could have NOT seen alcohol as the common denominator to all the things that had gone wrong in their lives, including not having a driver’s license because of their drinking. This is a fundamental shift in attitude, because once a person really gets it, he or she cannot honestly justify or rationalize drinking again.
The best way to understand a restricted license is by explaining what it does not allow. A restricted license is a far cry from a full license. It is a serious restraint on the kind of driving a person can do, and provides a limited – severely limited – ability to drive, but at least it’s something, and a hell of a lot better than not being able to drive at all. Essentially, a restricted license is supposed to allow most people to drive enough to merely “get by.”
First, let’s understand what a restricted license is, and that’s best described by defining what it is not: a restricted license is not a full license. It is an accommodation, like a half measure, that is understood will NOT completely cover a person’s driving needs. A restricted license, by definition, is a license with restrictions. The intended result of a restricted license is to give a person some help in getting by, and this may work better for some people than others. That’s a given, and just the way things are. Moreover, this limited ability to drive is all business, without any provision for fun or recreation.
The main thing about interlock units is understanding how not to screw up, and, almost as important, what to do if things go wrong. When you’re a passenger on an airplane, you don’t really have to worry about the flying part of things, because the pilot takes care of that. You just need to know what to do if the oxygen masks drop, or if there is an emergency. With the interlock, learning how to use it takes mere minutes, and it becomes second nature almost instantly. I can’t stress enough that for as complicated as this may sound at first, getting and then learning how to use an interlock is really simple. It’s when something goes amiss that you need to be prepared, and we’ll get to that.
The most obvious purpose for an ignition interlock unit (sometimes colloquially called a “blow-and-go”) is to prevent someone from driving drunk. That’s easy enough to understand, but in the real world, the State of Michigan uses it to prevent a person from even getting the car started with a breath alcohol content higher than .025, a level far below what’s considered “drunk.” The idea is that anyone required to use an interlock is almost certainly someone who shouldn’t be be consuming alcohol in the first place, so anything beyond a nominal BAC reading is enough to keep the vehicle from going anywhere.
It’s a given that every normal person arrested for a DUI hopes there is some way out of it, and that maybe the whole thing can be dismissed – I certainly would! Sometimes, the police do make mistakes, and, if that happened in your case, you want to be sure the lawyer you hire can find and use that to your advantage. Although everyone probably knows this deep down inside, the fact that a person doesn’t normally do stuff like this, and was out drinking for something out of the ordinary, like a holiday party, makes no difference in terms of the case “sticking” or not.
Of course, things like holiday gatherings and parties do lend themselves to people overindulging. I have handled countless DUI cases here, in the Metro-Detroit area (Wayne Oakland and Macomb Counties), arising from work-related Christmas parties, New Year’s parties, and Super Bowl parties. Holidays like Memorial Day, Fourth of July and Labor Day also provide environments where people sometimes wind up drinking more than planned, and then find themselves trying to drive home. The same goes for company golf outings and other get-togethers like concerts and sporting events.
It’s normal for people to freak out over a DUI arrest. Unfortunately, most lawyer websites do little (or nothing) to alleviate such stress because the prevailing trend in legal marketing is fear-based. Whether intentional or not, the idea is to point out all the bad things that could ever possibly happen in order to motivate (scare) someone to call for help. I hate that tactic, and have always taken the opposite approach. For example, I like to point out that, almost without exception, jail is NOT on the menu in a 1st offense DUI case, at least here, in Oakland, Macomb or Wayne Counties.