Articles Posted in DUI

If you’re facing a DUI in Michigan, you want the finest legal representation you can get. Many people think that the biggest obstacle that lies between them and the best DUI lawyers is only financial. It’s true you’ll never get top-shelf legal help for bargain basement prices. However, way too many lawyers charge high fees for nothing more than average services. Paying a lot is no guarantee of anything more than being out a lot of money. Ultimately, what a person needs is the best lawyer for his or her case, and how to go about finding that is what we’ll explore in this article.

This will NOT be some thinly disguised “hire us” promotional piece. Instead, we’re going to look at some general principles that apply across the board – and across the state of Michigan. I point that out because our firm concentrates its DUI practice in the Metro-Detroit area, meaning the courts of Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and the surrounding counties. Although we’re in business to earn a living, we also realize that part of being the “best” lawyer for someone is to be the best fit for his or her needs, and location is an important part of that.

As a starting point, nobody should ever hire a lawyer or law firm that is arrogant or otherwise with whom it’s difficult to communicate. There has to be a certain kind “connection,” and this a means a lot more than just being told what one wants to hear. The world is full of poor saps who were suckered out of their money by being sold a bill of goods. It’s always easy to deliver encouragement and make things sound promising – and even better if you get paid to do that. The best DUI lawyers, however, explain things honestly, even if what they have to say is not all good news.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that, as a Michigan DUI law firm, we see an uptick in calls around the seasonal holidays. With the Fourth of July just having passed, we’re ready for the post-celebration flood, so to speak. Most holidays often come with an increase in DUI arrests, no matter what the weather. In this article, we’re going to explore how a holiday DUI can be different – and should be differentiated from – a “regular,” non-holiday drunk driving case, and how that can be used to produce a better outcome.

It may sound like a cliché, but the best thing anyone can do is avoid a DUI in the first place. The simple fact, however, is that nobody ever plans to get arrested for drunk driving. That just happens, and it’s always something of a surprise. In that sense, I’ve always wondered, who reads articles and watches videos about “What to do if You’re Pulled over for a DUI?” In the all likelihood, anyone reading this is almost certainly already facing a DUI charge, and looking for help.

After a person has been arrested, the issue becomes, what can we do about it? Of course, the best outcome is to just get out of the whole DUI charge completely dismissed. That can only happen, however, when the evidence is flawed in a significant way. When the evidence is solid enough to survive a legal challenge, then our focus, as a DUI law firm, must be on producing the best result under the existing facts. Specifically, this means avoiding as many of the legal penalties and negative consequences as possible. In terms of punishment, less is always better.

As Michigan DUI lawyers, we know that anyone who winds up facing a drunk driving charge would like to get some good news about his or her situation. That’s understandable. And to be sure, there usually IS some good news, even in such an unfortunate circumstance. For most people who have to go through the DUI process, things probably won’t turn out as bad as they fear. However, that fear can also be a huge motivating factor. When people are afraid, they are vulnerable, and easily drawn to the things they want to hear.

This is especially true of those lawyers who make it sound like they have some secret, special technique to get DUI cases dismissed. The truth, however, is that it doesn’t work that way. In fact, the real “secret” to getting the best results in DUI cases is basic, old-fashioned hard work. The best DUI lawyers concentrate on the fundamentals. Good work is the key to good outcomes. In the context of DUI cases, that requires obtaining and carefully examining every last shred of evidence.

What separates the best DUI lawyers from everyone else is mindset one has while investigating the evidence. A lawyer can’t just “look it over.” That kind of lame effort won’t win cases. Instead, the lawyer must presume that there is some flaw (or flaws) in the evidence, and that his or her job to keep digging until it’s found. The whole “mindset” thing may sound trivial, but it’s actually very important. A fighter doesn’t go into the boxing ring to “see what happens.” Instead, he or she goes in planning to win, and determined to figure out a way to do just that.

Everyone arrested for a DUI wonders what’s going to happen, and what they can and should do about it. In this article, we’re going to change from the perspective of the DUI attorney, because I’ve examined all that in many previous articles. Instead, we’re going to look at what happens through the eyes of a person actually going through a Michigan DUI case. Although what we’ll cover is generally the same all over Michigan, it will be drawn from our firm’s experience in the Metro-Detroit area, meaning the courts of Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, and the surrounding counties.

There is, of course, plenty of overlap between what the client and the lawyer experience in a DUI case. For example, both individuals must appear in court for certain hearings. However, to the client, it may sometimes seem that the lawyer is doing little more than merely “showing up.” As DUI lawyers, however, we are always working the case in some way or other.  Thus, while it may not look like we’re doing much, we might just be trying to use time strategically, in order to procure a better outcome in the case.

As a DUI attorney, I’m rather comfortable explaining things from my point of view. My team and I have, quite literally, handled thousands of DUI cases. However, we’ve always done that as lawyers representing someone else facing the charge. Although we know exactly “what’s going to happen” at every step along the way, and we can explain that to our clients, we’ve never actually been through a DUI as the person facing the charge. This article is going to be an attempt to do that as the person going through it. Now, with that in mind, let’s start:

Nobody ever wants to find themselves in need of a lawyer because he or she has been arrested for a DUI. A recent conversation with a new client, however, made me think about this in a way I never had before. My client’s spouse said, “We felt kind of dirty just having to look for a lawyer. We aren’t the kind of people who need lawyers for stuff like this.” I wasn’t insulted by that statement, but I was a bit surprised by it, because I know how normal and upstanding our DUI clients tend to be.

Our firm represents people from every walk of life. Without fail, our DUI clients are people with good jobs. They are the kinds of people who get involved in their own communities, even if it’s just helping out with their own kids’ activities. At least among those who hire us, each and every one of them feels a profound sense of embarrassment and worry that someone will find out about their DUI Most never thought they’d ever find themselves in the backseat of a police car, much less spending a night in jail.

In no way do our DUI clients resemble any definition of “criminal.” Yet for as otherwise upstanding as they may be, a DUI arrest puts them smack-dab in the middle of the criminal justice system. DUI cases are both criminal and traffic offenses (more specifically, a DUI is a criminal traffic offense). This is not meant to sound like some “suck up” sales-pitch, but my team and I simply don’t see our DUI clients as criminals, or as “dirty” in any way. Having represented thousands of people for DUI charges we see right past that, and look to the person, instead.

As Michigan DUI lawyers, we are regularly asked by people how a DUI will affect their employment. The good news is that, most of the time, a single DUI will NOT adversely impact a person’s job. That said, there are a few circumstances wherein it can and/or will be a problem. Fortunately, those are the exceptions, rather than the rule. In this article, we’ll briefly examine the issue of DUI and employment, along with the requirement, in some cases, to report a it to one’s employer and/or professional licensing body.

Let’s start with the basics: A DUI is both a criminal and a traffic offense. Under Michigan law, a conviction for any alcohol-related traffic offense will wind up on both a person’s criminal record AND his or her driving record. Michigan now has an “expungement” law that allows a single DUI to be removed from someone’s criminal record (but NOT driving record) after 5 years. The person must, of course meet certain conditions for that to happen. While that’s great, it doesn’t change the fact that the DUI first does go on both records, and the impact of that will be our focus here.

One of the more common questions put to us goes something like this: “Will my job find out about this?” The answer to that is almost always, “No” – unless you are required to report it to your employer. Neither the court system nor the police will ever notify any 3rd party of a person’s DUI case. Absent a contractual or legal obligation to inform an employer about a DUI arrest and/or pending case, nobody is going to know unless the person facing it says something.

A recent email inspired this article. The writer was seeking DUI advice, but expressed an interest in handling the case without DUI lawyer, or any lawyer, for that matter. Admittedly, my first thought was along the lines of then what are you contacting us for? We’re DUI lawyers; we get hired to handle cases. I imagined someone calling a heating and cooling company and saying “How do I replace my water heater without having to hire you?” As I thought about it, though, I became concerned about the huge risk this person was facing, more than anything else.

Here’s the actual message that was left: “I got an OWI on Friday. The cop said it’s my first offense. I’m most likely good without a lawyer but I’d like advice please.” The big issue here is that this person – and nobody facing any kind of DUI or criminal charge – is “good” without a lawyer. Even a legal aid clinic would decline just emailing someone advice. In fact, when a person is adamant about representing themselves in a criminal proceeding, courts will almost always appoint a lawyer to at least sit with them as “stand-by” counsel.

As we’ll see, there is a lot of truth in the old saying that “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” To be sure, the real risk (especially in a 1st offense DUI) of handling one’s own case is NOT getting locked up in jail for any extended period of time. That’s almost certainly no going to happen. Instead, the big worry is that a person may walk into a conviction that could be avoided, or otherwise miss out on a much more favorable outcome that could be had if the case was properly handled by a DUI lawyer.

Initially, the idea was for this to be a light-hearted “ABC’s of an OWI case” article. I though, why not take every letter int he alphabet and apply to a word relevant to Michigan drunk driving cases? As things got underway, however, it became clear that any such endeavor was both challenging and serious. What follows is a listing of some of the most frequently used and significant words in the DUI world. To be sure, many of the letters could represent several relevant words, so a decision had to be make that struck the right balance between commonness and importance.

The DUI process is governed both by law, and to some extent, by local procedure. For starters, the way things are done in any given court must be legally sound. That, however, still leaves a lot of room for differences in how an OWI case can be handled in one court versus another. For example, some Judges are much more patient about allowing lawyers ample time to work a case, while others have what’s called a “rocket-docket,” and want everything wrapped up ASAP.

It’s critical for a lawyer to know such things. This is why my team and I limit our DUI practice to the courts of the Metro-Detroit area or Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, and the surrounding counties. This is important for anyone who hires a DUI lawyer. The fees paid should buy the lawyer’s experience in a particular court, rather than provide his or her tuition to acquire it. This is why one of the very first questions we ask anyone who contacts us about an OWI case is “where?” Within a split second, we can size up a lot about a case just based upon the answer.