Michigan Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog
How is it that by hiring a lawyer, you can almost always “get out of” a traffic ticket? In this article, I’m going to skip all the discussion about policy and theory (the reader is likely not interested in that, anyway) and cut right to the chase about keeping points off of your record in a traffic ticket case, and how that applies in criminal and DUI cases, as well. Whether you like it or not, there is a certain reality at work here, and in some ways it is related to the old observation that, “It’s not what you know, but who you know.” Again, I want to avoid analyzing why things are the way they are, or how they should be in a perfect world, so I will use a real world example from my own life to illustrate: In the process of building our home, my wife and I were asked to pick out things like plumbing and light fixtures (my wife, as it turned out, did all the picking, with my input being limited to a bunch of “uh-huh” and nodding-in-agreement responses) at certain supply businesses. At some of these places, nothing could be purchased by the public at large, and at others, the price offered to those on the “inside” (builders, contractors and designers) was hugely discounted over what the public (we) would pay. It may not be fair or right or whatever, but it is what it is, and unless we wanted to pay a price that was, in some cases, 40% more, we played by the rules, my wife picked out the stuff, and the ultimate purchase was made by our builder or designer.
The point I’m making is that there is a similarity when it comes to things like traffic tickets, and even criminal offenses and DUI charges. In some cases, a lawyer, like me, walks in and just gets a deal that an unrepresented person can never procure simply because one is a lawyer and the other is not. It’s why, for example, cops don’t get traffic tickets and why Chrysler, Ford and GM offer employee pricing. It is what it is, and for my short time on the planet, I’m not about to take up the cause of whether that’s right or not; I offer my services to those who will pay for them in order to avoid the points on a traffic ticket or make things better in a drunk driving, misdemeanor or felony case. When I need to, I go to someone to get the “friends and family” deal on a car, and I hire a contractor to do whatever work needs to be done at my home, and/or to avail myself of his or her discount on the supplies we need. There are some “do-it-yourself” diehards who will try anything to save a buck, and to them I say, “good luck.” I have no interest in either being one of those people, nor do I want to deal with them. My own dad, who spent his career as a letter carrier for the U.S. Post Office and therefore did not earn a ton of money, was a firm believer in hiring a professional to do the job; he paid the plumber, the electrician and the mechanic to do things right. While other dads may have spent an entire weekend figuring out and trying to do their own car repair, my dad was only too happy to drop the car off, have the mechanic fix it, and know that it was done correctly by someone who’s done that same repair countless times before. I’m the same way both in terms of what I do as a lawyer, and what I hire outside professionals to do for me.
As I noted above, this connects with, but is certainly not limited to the idea of “who you know.” In other words, there are courts a lawyer can walk into and just because he or she knows everyone, get a really good deal. On the other hand, some lawyers may take cases in far-away courts (this is something I avoid completely by keeping things strictly local by appearing pretty much only in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb County courts) and still be able to work everything out, just because he or she is a lawyer. In one sense, that’s part “good ol’ boys network,” and in another sense, it’s not that at all. At the end of the day, any lawyer who walks into any courthouse carries at least the implied understanding that either something can be worked out amicably, or it can be dragged out as a huge, time-consuming mess. This is the real, if not unspoken point of hiring a lawyer in the first place…