How To Hire A Criminal Defense Lawyer
If I had a nickel for every advertisement used by a criminal defense lawyer that uses the word AGGRESSIVE, I would have a lot of nickels.
But please don't fall for this-don't hire a criminal defense lawyer because he or she seems yells the loudest; looks into the camera most directly; and come across as a fighter.
Why?
Because there are at least three more important factors to consider when hiring someone to protect you or someone you know who has been accused of a crime.
First, find out how much experience they have defending your kind of case before the very prosecutor, court, and judge that is handling your case. The old joke about lawyers is that there are two kinds; one who knows the law and one who knows the judge. You need both, especially when your freedom is potentially at stake.
Criminal defense is no place for rookies. Let someone else be a new lawyer's guinea pig. You need to know whether the lawyer you are considering has handled exactly the kind of case that you are facing.
An experienced lawyer should be able to point to some track record of success. But don't go too far extrapolating from what happened to some other client. if your lawyer defended someone accused of robbing a bank, and it turns out that the closed circuit camera shows a clear image of the client, and the client confesses, and there are ten witnesses who make a positive identification, don't blame the lawyer for not getting a great result for that client.
There is no area of law where the specific facts of your case matter more than in criminal defense.
That is why the second factor to consider when hiring a criminal defense lawyer is how much time did the lawyer spend with you; how much detail did they go into. Generally speaking the more the better. Time is an element of the resources a criminal defense lawyer brings to their job. And depending on the nature of the charges you are facing, resources may make a big difference. If you are dealing with the federal government or a prosecutor from a large city, you aren't going to have more resources than the prosecutor unless you are very wealthy. So all things being equal, more resources on your side increase the chances that you can get a decent deal from the government.
And that brings me to the third thing you need to know about a criminal defense lawyer. What is their relationship with the prosecutor? A vast majority of cases are plea-bargained. In other words, a vast majority of cases are settled and there is no trial. Real life is very different from Law and Order. In real life, cases don't generally make it all the way to a trial. Thus, you need someone who has credibility with the prosecution; someone respected; someone who will at least be listened to when he or she makes an argument to the prosecutor.
You think experienced prosecutors get bullied by AGGRESSIVE lawyers? Not very often. Sometimes you see that if your case is minor and a newbie prosector has been assigned to your case. But the more serious the charges the more experienced the prosecutors are likley to be. That's why you need someone who is respected as a lawyer; not some hot head who comes across as a jack ass.
Ok. There might be one aspect to this aggressivenes thing. But it's not what's mentioned in the lawyer's advertising. There is sociological research showing that defense lawyers tend to relate to prosectors and judges more than they do to most of their clients. That makes sense. Most lawyers, regardless of what side of the case they are on, have more in common with each other than they do with their many of their clients. Thus, there can be a tendency for some criminal defense lawyers to sell their clients down the river by taking the first plea offered by the government. This can be especially problematic because most criminal defense lawyers get paid a flat fee in advance. They can have a financial incentive to take the money and then not to work so hard. That is a real concern. But the solution to that problem isn't someone who proclaims that they are aggressive. The solution is someone who demonstrates that they are willing to take the time and be throrough. I would choose a soft spoken throrough criminal defense attorney over a loud mouthed slacker every time.
So remember--most of the talk about being aggressive is for the unsophisticed. Instead, focus on three things--experience, resources (including time), and the quality of their relationship with the prosecutor.
Categories: Criminal Defense Lawyers | Categories: Hiring A Lawyer | Permalink
