Michigan Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog
Although there is a lot that goes into a Michigan driver’s license restoration appeal, 3 things are really critical. In this article, we’re going to briefly examine each of them, in turn. These 3 things are essential to winning a license restoration appeal case. That said, there are also a few other requirements that need to be met before a case can go forward. While anyone can file a case, unless someone is legally eligible, the whole thing will be rejected. The date of a person’s eligibility is entirely dependent on his or her DUI and driving record.
A person must also be sober, and be able to prove it, in order to have any chance of winning. Our firm generally requires someone to have at least 18 months of clean time before we’ll consider filing a case. “Clean time” means complete abstinence from alcohol and all other substances. In essence, a person must show that he or she is alcohol and drug-free, and has both the ability and commitment to never drink or use anything anything again – including recreational marijuana.
A Michigan driver’s license restoration appeal starts with the substance use evaluation (SUE). Actually, in our office, the process begins with us preparing our client to undergo the evaluation. As we do that, we complete a form of our own creation called a “substance use evaluation checklist.” That form, along with other information, is provided to our evaluator to make sure that every relevant detail is properly disclosed and gets listed. This is very important, because an insufficient evaluation is one of the main reasons people wind up getting denied. Let me explain…
The most important element of this whole discussion is value. Value means what you get for your money. In a license appeal case, it means winning back the ability to drive again, legally. Let’s be very clear on this point – NOTHING else matters besides winning. There is no value in a free lawyer who loses, any more than there is any value in the most expensive lawyer who doesn’t win, either. In other kinds of cases, a person pays legal fees for the lawyer’s best efforts. The hope is that the attorney’s experience and skill will produce the desired result. That doesn’t apply to license appeal cases.
That kind of statement completely misses the point. License appeals are all about proving one’s sobriety. That’s not to say no-one has ever lied his or her way through the process, but our firm wants nothing to do with any case like that. The whole goal of a license appeal is for the Secretary of State to screen out those people who present any risk to ever drink again. For as unique as each and every driver’s license restoration case is, however, what makes that so generally falls into 1 of 3 broader categories:
We’ll come back to that statement shortly, because as our talk progressed, it became clear that I was not seeing the full picture of what she meant. I had thought, at least up until that moment, that the main reason people would be afraid to call (or otherwise contact) an attorney was a fear of being “hounded.” I can relate to that, because it’s the very reason I don’t want to give out my contact information online. Plenty of sites offer something like a “free quote,” but the catch is that you must provide a phone number and/or email, first. Then, they never leave you alone….
It’s a simple proposition: Follow our directions, and we’ll win your license restoration case – guaranteed. Unfortunately, there are plenty of people who just have a knack for getting in their own way. They make things harder than they need to be. We encounter this when speaking with someone who wants their license back, but insists on doing it “their way.” That won’t fly with the Secretary of State, and it doesn’t work for us, either. In fact, the point of this article will be a variation on the theme “my way or the highway.” Think of it more as “either our way, or NO highway.”
I explored this in a recent article entitled “Using Recreational Marijuana will kill a Michigan Driver’s License Restoration Case.” This topic is so important, however, that we need to look at it again. Recently, Ann, our senior assistant, expressed her frustration about recreational pot. She noted that a lot of people who manage to quit drinking suddenly take up smoking weed. It used to be that our biggest “problem” with potential clients was that some of them simply hadn’t completely quit drinking. Now, it’s that they use marijuana.
Unfortunately, this happens more than the reader might imagine. In the criminal and DUI world, this is particularly true when people act out of fear. Too many will sign on with the first lawyer who calls them back after-hours, or over the weekend. In license appeal cases, this often happens when a person chooses a lawyer based primarily on price. Neither of those is the right way to secure quality representation. In fact, they reinforce the notions that a good hiring decision should be explainable by answering the questions posed above.
She found out, once she called our office. We asked her a series of questions to determine whether or not she really had quit drinking. At the end of the conversation, she offered her assessment of our firm, and even suggested we use it as a “jingle” of sorts: We’re not just truth speakers, we’re truth seekers. Specifically, she expressed a pleasant surprise that our questions over the phone mirrored what we had written about making sure that anyone we represent really has quit drinking, and doesn’t use any other substances, either.
In order to win a license appeal, a person must not only be legally eligible, he or she must also be genuinely sober, as well. A hungry lawyer can accept anyone’s case, and take his or her money for it, as well, but precisely because our firm guarantees to win every restoration and clearance appeal case we accept, we can’t – and won’t – do that. Instead, we’ll only accept a case that we know we can make into a winner.
There is more to winning a license appeal, though, than just having quit drinking. A person not only has to prove he or she has quit drinking, they must also prove themselves to be a safe bet to never drink again. Under the rules governing license appeals, these proofs must be “clear and convincing evidence.” A person just can’t file a case and merely claim to have quit drinking; he or she must convince the Secretary of State that it’s true, and that he or she is also genuinely committed to never drinking again. This is where the “story” part comes in, since nobody ever quits drinking because it’s working out so well.