Chicago DUI lawyer cannot help you if you don't tell her everything

If you want the best result for your DUI case, you must be totally honest and forthcoming with your lawyer.  It is your lawyer's job to plan the best strategy in your case to get you the best possible outcome. It is your responsibility to provide your lawyer with all the information necessary to put on the best Chicago DUI defense for you. What you don't tell your lawyer can, and likely will, hurt you.

March 4, Des Moines, IA

Top 10 Ways to Get Fired by Your Lawyer

 

#1 - Lie to your lawyer. This is the number one thing you can do to get your lawyer to fire you. Your lawyer is your representative. Every case has its warts. Your lawyer can only help you if he or she knows the whole story. If you lie to your attorney, or fail to disclose pertinent information, by the time the lawyer finds out from the other side, it is often too late

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I recently had a client who was charged with a DUI tell me he was the only person in the car when he was charged with a DUI. (This is generally not a position of strength because it becomes the client's word against the police officers, although I have won cases where my client's testimony is the only testimony aside from the police officer's.) He subsequently overheard another lawyer conferring with me on a different case.  Once he realized that the lawyer was able to get the DUI charges dismissed because the state was unable to tell who was driving, my client suddenly revealed new information to me.  His family member had been in the vehicle at the time of the accident which led to the arrest... and his family member was the driver!  What my client thought was an unimportant peice of information was an essential piEce of my strategy to get the charges dismissed.  In his case, unlike many other criminal matters, the prosecutor would almost certainly not attempt to try his relative because they had no evidence to suggest his relative was under the influence of alcohol, even if that was in fact the case.

If you do not believe you can tell your Chicago DUI lawyer the truth, then I strongly suggest that you discharge him or her, and find a different lawyer with whom you feel comfortable being completely forthcoming.  The stakes are simply too high for your lawyer to be underinformed or misinformed.