Michigan Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog
This is part 2 of an article examining why asking “how much do you charge?” is the dead-wrong way to go about looking for a lawyer for a criminal, driver’s license restoration or DUI case. In part 1 of this piece, I pointed out that you won’t find the right lawyer by asking the wrong questions, nor will you ever get a high standard of legal services at cut-rate prices. I did caution, however, that plenty of lawyers charge fees way in excess of the level of services they provide, meaning, that it’s also easy to get “taken” by paying premium fees for mediocre skills.
I also noted that attention to small details is one of the key things that differentiate better lawyers from the rest of the pack, especially those market themselves based on low cost. These little issues are usually not front and center or glaringly obvious in an active case, but are the kinds of things that show up down the road, sometimes years later, and make a person wish he or she would have known or thought about them at the time. The example I used in to make my point in part 1 was having to report a DUI to a current or prospective employer, or to a licensing agency.
Assume that when the hypothetical case was pending, the person may have thought things were great simply because he or she didn’t get any jail (and I made clear that jail is almost never on the menu in a 1st offense DUI case, anyway), and only served a year on probation while having to complete an alcohol counseling program.
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.
Unfortunately, we are frequently called after the person has already spoken to the police and answered questions. Without fail, every single person who calls after speaking with the police says something like “I think I might have made things worse,” because they realize, although only after the fact, that they should have kept quiet. If you’re reading this after you’ve talked, don’t freak out. Most people do. Then my job becomes making the best of what we have to work with.
At a preliminary exam, the prosecutor will call some witnesses. This usually includes the arresting and/or investigating police officer, a victim, if there was one, and maybe a key eyewitness. Not everyone needs to testify at this phase of the case. Remember, this isn’t a trial, and the prosecutor doesn’t have to prove anything like guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but merely that there is a debatable question of fact that the defendant committed the charged crime. In that sense, “he-said, she-said” is more than good enough for a case to survive the probable cause test at this stage.
The one thing that most people know right out of the gate is that a felony is more serious than a misdemeanor. Few things in the law are absolute, but the idea that facing a misdemeanor is always “better” than facing a felony is one of them. Of course, the flip side is that facing a felony is always “worse,” and usually more expensive.
In general, suspended and revoked license charges provide one of the best examples of the admonition that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” Over the course of my career, I have, in many cases, had to explain subtle but important nuances of licensing law to both Judges and prosecutors. Because I am a full-time driver’s license restoration and DUI lawyer, I work with the laws and rules that affect driver’s licenses every single day. I deal with everything, from the most common issues to the most obscure. I’ve had to research license issues most lawyers, including Judges and prosecutors, would never know exist, and then figure out how to resolve them.
Let’s quickly separate and explain the 2 indecent exposure (IE) charges: For starters, there’s the plain old “indecent exposure,” meaning a person’s genitals were exposed. This is a misdemeanor charge, and it can be brought for any kind exposure of the genitals, whether outright “flashing,” or even if a guy gets caught urinating. Next, there is “aggravated indecent exposure,” where a person was observed fondling his or her genitals. “Fondling” does not necessarily mean (although it can include) actual masturbation. Thus, any rubbing of the genitals is enough. Aggravated indecent exposure is a felony, but a special kind of “light” (meaning lenient) felony, often called a “high court misdemeanor.” To be perfectly clear about it, although the term “high court misdemeanor” may sound better, it is still a felony.
You haven’t spent much time wondering if something else is the problem, have you? Did it ever cross your mind that you’re sitting in the back of a cop car because you eat too much pizza, or work out too often, or watch more TV than you should? The point I’m driving at is that once you get any kind of nagging feeling that something’s up with your drinking, it almost always is. The simple truth is that alcohol screws more lives up than you could ever imagine. I see it every single day. If you could do my job for any length of time, you would have a front row seat to watch people going out and getting in trouble again and again, all because of drinking.
We’ll begin by restating what is far more overlooked than obvious: you have an absolute right to remain silent. We’ll get into this more later, but the day before this article was written, I met with a client who hired me after he spoke to a police detective and was subsequently arrested and charged with a crime. Because he is a nice guy who has never been in trouble before, my client naively asked the detective if it was a good idea to be talking to him, and if he should get a lawyer first. The detective, for his part, answered the question rather diplomatically, and replied, “I can’t tell you what to do.” Of course, my client now understands that he should not have said a word.
For anyone with a case in Oakland, Macomb or Wayne County, a “local” lawyer is not limited merely to one whose office is in the same city or county where the charge has been brought. Although that definition is overly narrow, it’s worse to have no concept of “local” when it comes to hiring a lawyer. I am, often enough, contacted by people from distant counties who want to hire me, and while that’s flattering, I have to explain that I keep it “local” by limiting my criminal and DUI practice to the various district and circuit courts of Oakland, Macomb and Wayne Counties (this is in stark contrast to my driver’s license restoration practice, which is statewide). Because of the geographic limitations on where I travel for court, I have no experience with how things are done elsewhere. As good as some attorney may be, one of the worst things a person can do is to pay for him or her to make a “special trip” to some court where he or she does not practice regularly.