Michigan Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog
If you are facing a Michigan DUI charge, the most important thing to you is getting out of it as painlessly as possible. When you go online, you get inundated by the endless legal marketing of lawyers fighting for your attention. To be sure, some of what you encounter may be enlightening, and even helpful, but when all is said and done, getting the best result in your DUI case is the only thing that matters. As Michigan DUI lawyers, my team and I live by the motto that success in a DUI case is best measured by what does NOT happen to you. Let’s explore what that really means…
Everyone begins their lawyer search looking to find the “best” representation possible. Some people, understandably, have only a limited financial ability, but as I often point out, while a person will never get top quality legal help at bargain prices, it is also true that many lawyers charge way too much for nothing more than just average services. In reality, there’s a far greater risk of overpaying for mediocre legal help, rather than anything else. As with many other things in life, cost (meaning price), does NOT equal value. In DUI cases, only results equal value.
Imagine you were driving across the country and your vehicle broke down on some lonely highway in the middle of the desert. You would, of course, grab your phone and try to find help. Imagine, while you were doing that, a van pulled up with the name “Pete the Plumber” on the side. Next thing you know, a guy hops out, introduces himself as “Pete,” looks under you hood, and says he can 100% fix your problem right then and there, He then proceeds to do just that. You wouldn’t care that it was “Pete the Plumber” and not “Mike the Mechanic” who got you back on the road because you got the best result!
As a consumer of legal services for a Michigan DUI charge, a person has to become a wise shopper and to learn how to filter through all the marketing hype and messaging out there to find real help that will get the best result. And to be clear, everything you’ll find online is marketing message of sorts. Our firm is no different; we have a marketing message, and one of its goals is for anyone who could be a potential client do some comparison shopping among local lawyers to see how we stack up.
Here’s the thing: Once you realize that every website is a marketing tool, and that everything on each one of them is (or is at least intended to be) a marketing message of sorts, you can’t “unsee” that, and it really changes your perspective about what you find online. It’s like you’ve been given a pair of special glasses that allow you suddenly see things as they really are.
It’s simply a fact that no lawyer or law firm puts in all the time and money to build, maintain and provide free information on a website just because they’re nice. Our firm’s blog, for example, which is fully searchable, has more information in the DUI section and the driver’s license restoration section than can be found any and everywhere else combined – but it’s not maintained as an act of charity.
We publish it because another key facet of our marketing approach is to provide as much useful information as possible and then, as noted above, encourage people compare us to everyone else. At the end of the day, just like anyone with a web presence, we hope that our efforts lead to us being hired. To be sure, people can use our blog for a learning resource (heck, even a lot of lawyers do), and that’s fine, but its underlying purpose is to be a marketing tool.
Before the internet, anyone looking for a lawyer, or a plumber, or a mechanic, or just about anything else, had just one resource – the Yellow Pages. Phone book ads were insanely expensive (I remember paying about $5000 per month for a half page, “black and yellow,” meaning NON-color ad, back in the late 1990’s), and a business had to fit its whole marketing message into that little space, along with its phone number and address, as well.
Probably because of those space limitations, the most common kind of slogans for lawyers used terms like “#1,” “Winning,” “First choice,” “Best,” “Aggressive,” “Tough,” and other factually meaningless catchphrases.
How does any law firm know itself to be “#1,” and how do you define “first choice?” Whose first choice?
Early on, some of that “sloganeering” carried over into internet marketing, but thankfully, it has largely (although not completely) disappeared as we progress further into the Information Age.
When a person has to confront the realities of a pending OWI charge (Operating While Intoxicated, the actual term for what everyone simply calls a “DUI”), his or her first wish, of course, is to get completely out of it. Obviously, out of every possibility, the best result in your DUI case is to just have the whole thing dismissed outright. However, despite any misleading marketing messages to the contrary, such outcomes are the exception, and not the rule.
Realizing that their whole charge is unlikely to just “go away,” most reasonable people understand that the best realistic outcome in most cases is to avoid as many of the legal penalties and negative consequences as possible. For us, as Michigan DUI lawyers, this means doing things like keeping a person out of jail, keeping his or her record as clean as possible, and protecting his or her ability to drive, as well
Returning home after being arrested for a DUI, most people understandably feel afraid, and wind up on their phone, tablet, or computer, trying to figure out how to navigate through all the competing messages from different lawyers.
Some attorneys love posting reviews or testimonials, and make it a priority to get as many from clients as possible. Personally, I hate to bug people for that, but there are proven (if not intrusive) methods to follow-up with former clients and get them to write a review or a testimonial.
Other lawyers heap on the self-praise, or manage to acquire and reprint loads of little badges and icons (we receive countless solicitations for this kind of stuff) on their sites.
I’ve already shared that our marketing approach is to provide information. I like to explain how things work, probably because, when I’m the consumer of any kind of good or service, I like to read how things work. This approach is very time consuming, but it works for us, as it seems to attract the kind of clients with whom my team and I “click.”
Yet when all is said and done, what really matters – and the only thing that matters, really – is getting the best possible result in our DUI case.
If someone paid a fortune for the most expensive, well-dressed lawyer in the fanciest building around, but wound up getting slammed by the Judge, what good was that?
If, by contrast, he or she hired some new brand-new, “baby lawyer” who had never been to court before, but somehow managed to get the deal of the century, and that person wound up with the most lenient sentence anyone has ever heard about, what kind of criticism can made against that?
The point I’m driving at is that no matter what the marketing message, at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is that you get the best result possible. Remember the gold standard: Success in a DUI case is always best measured by what does NOT happen to you. Your task, as the consumer, is to sort through these competing messages and find the lawyer who’s best for you, keeping in mind that, above everything else, the goal is to actually GET, and not just talk about getting, the best possible outcome.
The approach of our firm is to explain the legal process, and things related to it. As noted, the articles on this blog require a huge investment of time, but that’s how we do things.
Other lawyers have different approaches.
Although we guarantee to win every Michigan driver’s license restoration case we take, we can’t make any such assurances with respect to DUI charges. However, we can promise this – my team and I will use our extensive experience and skills, and we’ll fight intelligently, while pouring our hearts and souls into making sure we produce the very best result in your DUI case.
No lawyer can do more, and we will never do less.
Although it sounds a lot like a marketing slogan, the simple fact is, you can’t do better than that. If we handle it, you will get the best result possible in you DUI case.
If you’re facing a DUI charge and looking for a lawyer, be a smart consumer and read around. Pay attention to how different lawyers break down the DUI process, and how they explain their various approaches to it.
When you’ve done enough reading, start checking around and exploring your options. You can learn a lot by speaking to a live person.
If your DUI case (our driver’s license restoration practice is state-wide) is pending here, in the Metro-Detroit area, meaning anywhere in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb or the surrounding counties, give us a ring as well. All of our consultations are free, confidential, and done over the phone, right when you call. My team and I are very friendly people who will be glad to answer your questions, explain things, and even compare notes with anything some other lawyer has told you.
We can be reached Monday through Friday, from 8:30 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. at either 248-986-9700, or 586-465-1980.