Lawyer Up: 8 Reasons Why You Need to Hire a Defense Lawyer
With over 10 million people jailed every year, it seems almost inevitable that at some point in your life, you may run into trouble with the law. Being arrested and sent to jail, or worse, prison, can have a massive impact on your life. From the moment you’re in handcuffs, millions of questions will circulate through your mind, the biggest of which will be, “How can I get out of this?”
When managing legal trouble, the absolute best course of action you can take is hiring a defense lawyer. While you’re under no obligation to do so, having a skilled attorney in your corner can vastly improve your pre-trial, court and post-trial experiences.
Below, we outline a few advantages that seeking professional legal help offers.
1. Attain a Better Understanding of Your Situation
The law is a tricky subject. It has a virtually unlimited number of facets meant to cover as many contingencies as possible. In its attempt to be encompassing, it can be extremely difficult to determine how the law applies to you locally and at a federal level.
Therein lies the first advantage of hiring a criminal defense attorney.
From the get-go, your lawyer will walk you through what you’re being charged with, what it means, and how your situation could play out. That understanding will help you plan your future.
2. Assistance When Dealing With Police
Police will be heavily involved in most criminal cases, especially in the early days of you being charged. As police interview you and search for evidence, know that they will not be forthcoming about their intentions since they have a vested interest in seeing you lose your legal battle.
An attorney can deal with the police on your behalf and ensure that everything they do is done to the letter of the law. One mistake by law enforcement and your lawyer can have evidence tossed out or perhaps even push for your case to be dismissed.
3. Bail Application Support
America’s “innocent until proven guilty” system makes it so most people that are arrested can post bail and await trial from home. That is, of course, if you’re not seen as a flight risk.
Your lawyer can help you on multiple fronts when it comes to the bail process including fighting for you to be granted bail, lowering your bail amount and helping you with your bail application.
4. Gathering Evidence
Just because the burden of proof is on the prosecution when you’re being accused of a crime doesn’t mean that you don’t need to prepare an excellent defense. Unless you’re a skilled investigator that knows how to collect evidence that can be admitted in court, the process of building your portfolio of proof is better left to professionals.
A defense lawyer likely works with several skilled sleuths that can do digging on your behalf to cast doubt on your guilt.
5. Witness and Jury Roundups
Selecting the right people during witness and jury rounds is an important aspect of any defense strategy. Chances are, you don’t have the expertise to sort through pools of possibilities to stack a jury in your favor and have the right line-up of people ready to attest to your innocence. Criminal defense attorneys are experts at dismissing jurors that are likely to be biased against you and bringing in witnesses, both regular and expert, that will cast doubt on prosecution.
Remember, all it takes is one shred of reasonable doubt for jurors to call you innocent. Your lawyer’s ability to pick the right people can significantly raise the odds that reasonable doubt will be identified by the peers who ere judging you.
6. Fielding Public Interest
Not every criminal case drums up public interest. If yours does though, even in small outlets like local papers, the last thing you’ll want is to have to field that attention. After all, if you say the wrong thing to the wrong person or entity, you could sink your chances of getting off.
All statements released to the public by an attorney are going to be ones that buoy your case, not sink it. Furthermore, if something is said to the public by your attorney that in any way hurts your odds of being let go, you may be able to call for a retrial due to incompetence of representation.
7. Less Stress
Going through the process of fighting legal charges will take a massive physical and emotional toll on you. By letting a lawyer handle the day to day tasks involved with managing things, you’ll save yourself a boatload of stress.
This may sound dramatic but having a lawyer support you during these trying times and shoulder some of the pressure could literally add years to your life.
8. An Improved Outcome
At the end of the day, the best value a lawyer provides is the fact that with their help, your odds of getting a reduced sentence or no sentence at all go up dramatically. That by itself is worth bringing a lawyer on for.
A Defense Lawyer Is Waiting and Ready to Fight for You
No matter where you live, there’s a defense lawyer nearby with impressive credentials that are ready to fight for you. Let them.
With a lawyer in your corner, your odds of navigating these troubling times skyrocket and the time between now and when you’ll be able to put all of this behind you shrinks.
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