Michigan Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog
Our firm guarantees to win every first time Michigan driver’s license restoration and clearance case we take. This protects you, as the client, from risking your money, because it means you’ll only pay us once to get back on the road. Our guarantee also means that a question, like, “what do you thing my chances are?” is lame, because if we take your case, you will get your license back – period. Key to our success, though, is that we don’t take just and and every case that comes our way. In the short video below, I explain how we can make our guarantee:
In fact, we have to decline a lot of potential clients, because the single most important and non-negotiable precondition to winning a license reinstatement case is that you must have given up drinking for good. While everyone who has lost their license after multiple DUI’s wants it back, only a minority of the people who contact us have actually quit drinking and gotten sober. If a person hasn’t done both those things, and for a long enough period of time, then they don’t (yet) meet the requirements to win a license appeal, and we won’t take their case (yet).
In this way, our guarantee also protects us, as well. When we take on a new restoration or clearance case, our guarantee automatically attaches to it. We earn our livings by winning each case the first time, NOT by having to come back and do the whole thing over again, for free, the following year. The last thing we want to do is get tied to some case that can’t be made into a winner. Therefore, we carefully screen potential clients to make sure they have what it takes to win, rather than getting stuck with someone who doesn’t, or needs more time before they can prevail.
Every single day, we speak with people who have quit drinking, but have other issues that need to be resolved before they can move forward with a license appeal. These include things like not having enough sober time, still being on probation (or parole), or otherwise not being eligible to file a license appeal due to a mandatory additional revocation that was imposed for getting caught driving after their license was revoked.
I often point out that our office, like every lawyer, doctor, dentist, plumber or tattoo parlor (just to use a few examples) is in business to make money. We have every reason to want to take new, paying cases. It’s how we earn our incomes.
In fact, it’s not easy to turn away people who want to pay your fee, and that’s where our guarantee acts as a safety net to make sure we never let the temptation of a payday cause us to take a case we can’t win, or that needs a bit more time before it can be made into a winner.
Our guarantee, which essentially acts as a warranty, binds us to a first time license restoration or clearance appeal until it does win. This makes us as invested in the successful outcome of every case we take just as much as our clients.
Although we have never had to go back a 3rd time to win someone’s license, our guarantee is quite clear and quite simple: unless a client lies or does something that would otherwise disqualify him or her from winning his or her case (like start drinking again), once we’ve taken a person’s case, we stick with it until he or she wins a hearing before the Michigan Secretary of State Office of Hearings and Administrative Oversight (OHAO, and formerly know as the AHS, DAAD, and DLAD).
Accordingly, we have both every incentive to take a viable case, but every disincentive to NOT jump and take a case that either cannot win, or needs more time to be developed into a winner.
Consider this illustration:
Hopeful Hannah calls our office and wants to hire a lawyer to win her license back. As we screen her, we find out that, although she quit drinking at the time of her last DUI, almost 20 months ago, she was sentenced to 2 years probation, meaning she will still be on probation for about another 6 months.
We know that Hannah can’t win until she’s been off probation for at least a while (depending on the length of a person’s sobriety, I’d usually want at least 4 months off of probation before undertaking a license appeal), so if we took her money now and plowed ahead by filing a license appeal, we’d be running head-first into a denial.
Perhaps, to some lawyer without a guarantee, that wouldn’t matter so much, but our firm has both a conscience AND a guarantee that stand as dual safeguards against such actions.
In other words, we hope you’ll trust us because we’re good, honest people, but you also get our guarantee, which protects you all the same.
If we did take Hannah’s case now, any “payday” we’d get would go out the window when we had to do her case all over again next year, without charge.
That’s a huge deal, because the way we do license appeals involves a lot of work. I often point out that there are no shortcuts to doing things right, and that is particularly true when it comes to license appeals.
Circling back to Hannah, we wouldn’t just turn her away, however.
Instead, and precisely because we’re good and honest people, and because we’re in business to earn a living, we’d spend the time with her to explain everything about license appeals, and then explain why she’d need to be off probation before we could get started, and how all that works.
Then, after we’d answered all her questions and explained things so that she understood everything, we’d advise her to call back in about 9 months so we could start making plans to get the ball rolling and get a case going for her.
I have covered just about every aspect of the license appeal process within the more than 500 driver’s license restoration articles I have written and published on this blog. In some of them, I have gone into an even deeper examination of our first time win guarantee, as well.
Here, my goal was simply to point out that our guarantee is really like 2 sides of the same coin, protecting us from taking a case that doesn’t win every bit as much as protecting a client from shelling out his or her money on a case that doesn’t win.
Occasionally, a caller will express some frustration about the process involved in winning license appeal. Many of these people are stuck on the idea that they “need” a license. Remember, proving one’s sobriety is the main thing required in a license appeal, and having given up drinking for good is the real meat and potatoes of the process.
As clear as that may be, lots of people still try to insist that things are or should be different for them.
These people, for whom drinking seems to be more important that anything else, will often say something like “this is bull$hit.”
Despite their lack of understanding of the principles and rules involved in getting one’s license back after having had it revoked for multiple DUI’s, they also overlook the fact that every case we don’t take is money out the window, and that we can’t pay the staff and the bills by NOT getting paid.
However, rather than succumb to the pleas of someone who expresses how badly they need their license back, but who is otherwise not in a position to win a license appeal case, our guarantee safeguards us from getting stuck with a case that’s a loser, and it protects the person from blowing their money in the hopes of getting a result that’s beyond their reach (at least at the time).
As I said before, our guarantee protects both you and us.
Although it’s a whole other subject in its own right, even our brief discussion here should make clear that the lack of a guarantee speaks volumes about a lawyer’s confidence, both in his or her abilities to screen out cases that can’t win, and to actually win those that are otherwise eligible.
If you’re looking for a lawyer to win back your Michigan driver’s license, or to clear a Michigan hold on your driving record, be a good consumer and do your homework. Read around, and see how various lawyers explain the license appeal process, and how they explain their approach to it.
When you’ve done enough of that, start checking around. 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 can be reached Monday through Friday, from 8:30 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. (EST), at 248-986-9700 or 586-465-1980.