Michigan Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog
Not too long ago, I published an article about how our firm works on our DUI cases as a team. That’s actually true for all of our cases, including (and especially) every driver’s license restoration appeal case we take. Our firm is the ORIGINAL driver’s license restoration practice. We were publishing articles about license appeal cases and our unsurpassed win rate well over a decade ago. This was long before any of the current wave of “McLicense” operations came online, trying to use every variation of “license restoration” in their website names for attention.
From the very beginning, every part of every driver’s license restoration appeal case we handled has been a team effort. This is not merely a division of labor among my team and I, but rather a quality control check and re-check way of doing things. To be sure, we do divide some of the tasks in such a way that someone will primarily handle one instead of another. However even then, each of us still winds up checking the other’s work. No matter how you cut it, having more sets of eyes reviewing a case is always better having than fewer.
Our legal assistants know as much about the workings of a driver’s license restoration appeal case as anyone, and far more than most. This makes us different – but in a good way. Although few other law firms have copied it, ours was the first practice, to the best of my knowledge, to provide a guarantee to win every driver’s license restoration and clearance appeal case we take. We started doing that because we do such good work.
This notion of having a “team” work on every license appeal isn’t some marketing message, either. It’s our reality, and it’s backed up by our guarantee. I’d sure love to take credit and claim that our firm was brilliant in deciding to employ a “team” approach. However, the simple truth is that, like so many things, it just “happened” that way, and we never thought of doing it differently.
As with all things, we refined out skills through experience, and also, in many cases, through the mistakes of others. Let me pause for a moment and use a real-life analogy to explain:
Years ago, after college and then law school, I went on to complete a post-graduate program of addiction studies. One of my professors, who was then head of the department, would hand out a quiz at the beginning of every class. Understand, this wasn’t undergrad, or even graduate school, this was post-grad, meaning a person had to have a graduate degree to even be admitted. Accordingly, everyone in this program had a very strong reason for being there.
As students go, we were all serious, and paying big money to be there. One day, someone asked the professor why he would always quiz us. After all, it was unlikely anyone would pay all the money for this kind of advanced education and NOT do the reading. His reply has stuck with me ever since.
He explained that he assumed everyone had done the reading, so it wasn’t about grades, or catching anyone slacking off. Instead, he would determine the 10 most important points to be taken from the readings, and then come up with questions based upon them. He figured that most of the students would get nearly all of the questions right.
However – and here’s the kicker – if anyone got a question wrong, when we’d go over the quiz, the person would pay particular attention to what they didn’t understand.
As the professor put it, nobody would really learn anything much from the things he or she answered correctly. By contrast, though, a person would be very likely to remember what they got wrong, and, more important, why. Learning “the hard way,” meaning by learning by mistake, stings a little bit.
Like it or not, those are often some of life’s most teachable moments.
Obviously, for surgeons and airplane pilots, mistakes have to be small. Still, the very best in any field is someone who has learned, through experience, how to do things better. Everyone learns to perfect his or her craft through repetition. That said, the things that don’t go as planned are often the most instructive.
In driver’s license restoration cases, it is very often something that is missed, as in overlooked, that causes a case to lose. By having multiple people handle every case, the chances of that happening in our office are substantially reduced. Our firm can guarantee to win every case we take because each member of our team, on his or her own, is good at this. However, the fact that we work on all of our cases collectively adds an additional measure of quality control.
Because that’s the way we have always handled our driver’s license restoration appeal cases, we cannot imagine doing anything less. Overlooking even the smallest detail can cause a license appeal case to be denied. We see that a lot, but fortunately, most often through other people’s mistakes at some point in the process.
This is because a fairly sizable part of our client base is made up of people who have previously filed and lost a license appeal, either as a “do-it-yourself” affair, or having used some other lawyer. When our firm takes on these cases, it is critical for us to read the order of denial issued by the Michigan Secretary of State.
This has given us the advantage, thousands of times over, of seeing what other people got wrong. Accordingly, we know how a very small oversight can cause a person to lose. We see this often, when, for example, someone doesn’t properly disclose, explain, and/or get the appropriate physician’s letter for certain medications.
As I noted, it’s just the way we do things that everyone in our office has a hand in every driver’s license restoration appeal case we take. That means every document is checked multiple times over. It’s this meticulous attention to detail that is the foundation for our win guarantee.
It’s important to point out that our guarantee represents a lot more than us just being confident in our work. It also acts as both a guardrail and potential “penalty” for us, as well. If we lose a case, our guarantee obligates us to stick with it until the client does win. That means we have to do the whole thing all over again, without further legal fees.
In simple terms, that’s double the work for exactly half the pay.
In point of fact, we count on winning every driver’s license restoration appeal case we take the first time around. We are as invested as our clients in doing just that. Nobody wants to lose, and then have to wait to file again next year. By the same token, because we’re in business to earn our livings, we don’t want to do twice the work for half the money.
And speaking of money, we are (and always have been) the ONLY law firm to publish our fees online. In a world where the notion of “transparency” has become so popular, why would there be any secretiveness around price? We cannot fathom why lawyers make people ask how much they charge. To be clear, we don’t compete with anyone on cost. However, there is nobody better at driver’s license restoration cases than us.
Understand that being obligated to stick with a case until it wins isn’t the reason we do such good work. Instead, and as mentioned above, our guarantee is the result of the good work we do. When we instituted it years ago, it was because we were confident enough to do that. Even so, it not only protects the client from risking his or her money, but it reminds us that the case is ours until it does win. Put another way, it helps keep us on our toes.
Normally, when a person calls our office, he or she will be screened. We’ll ask a number of preliminary questions to make sure he or she is eligible to file a driver’s license restoration appeal case. Sometimes, we’ll want a copy of the person’s driving record to confirm something or other. Those calls and consultations may be handled any one of us.
It’s the same for every part of the case – except the actual hearing and the prep session we do with each client before the hearing. The hearings must be conducted by a lawyer. The prep sessions are also handled by 1 of our 3 lawyers (including me).
Both the substance use evaluation (SUE) and the letters of support must be carefully examined and corrected. Each of them will be reviewed, separately, by at least 2 members of our team (including at least 1 lawyer).
Finally, and every bit as important as everything else, we talk, as a group, about our driver’s license restoration appeal cases. For example, a few weeks before this article was written, I called back a client who had emailed a question to one of the associate attorneys in our firm about his case. He was a bit surprised that I was the one responding, and knew the details of his situation well enough to answer his question. As is our usual practice, our entire team had discussed his case, and I was familiar with the issue about which he was inquiring.
That’s the way it should be. And with our firm, that’s the way it always has been, and always will be.
As I noted above, each of us, alone, is good at what we do. However, when we pool our resources, check, and then re-check every last thing in every driver’s license restoration appeal case we handle, we’re better still. It’s that kind of team approach and attention to detail that allows us to guarantee our work.
No lawyer can do more, and we will never do less.
If you’re looking for a lawyer to win back your driver’s license or obtain the clearance of a Michigan hold on your driving record, be a wise consumer and read around.
This blog is a great place to start. It is updated weekly with new, original content. The archives are fully searchable, and, to-date, the driver’s license restoration section has over 660 articles. The reader can find more useful information here than any and everywhere else combined. Don’t take my word for it, though; look around for yourself.
After you’ve done enough reading, start checking around. You can learn a lot by speaking with a live person. Make sure you give our office a ring, as well. We can handle your case no matter where in the world you live.
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 and explain things. We’ll even be happy to 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. (EST) at either 248-986-9700, or 586-465-1980.