subject: Hiring A Criminal Defense Attorney: 5 Questions To Ask [print this page] Hiring a criminal defense attorney can be expensive, so it pays to make sure you find someone who is worth the money. That doesn't necessarily mean hiring the firm with the highest profile or the guy with the most ads on televisions, either. It doesn't even necessarily mean hiring the "best", if there was a way to actually quantify that to begin with. It means hiring someone who is right for your case. Here are five questions you can ask them to see if they are.
How long have you been in the area?
It is important that you hire a criminal defense attorney with several years of experience, but this is usually something you can glean from their website. What you may not know until you ask is how long they have had a practice in this town. Believe it or not, this matters. The longer a lawyer has been plying his trade in one area, the better he'll know the usual courtroom participants, including the judges. If you think this kind of networking doesn't matter in a trial, you have a lot to learn.
How many cases like mine have you handled?
You don't want a criminal defense attorney who looks puzzled by the details of your case. In other words, you want someone with a lot of specific experience with the crime you've been charged with. The best guy in town may handle robberies primarily and have little experience handling whatever you were arrested for. This makes a difference, so don't be afraid to ask.
What's the strategy?
A criminal defense attorney is not going to take the time to lay out his entire strategy for you in an initial consultation, but he should be willing to give you a brief overview of what he plans to do with your case. This isn't so much so you can evaluate the strategy, since you probably wouldn't know whether it was sound or not, but rather to see if he'll do it. If he wants money before he'll even begin to talk about strategy, that's not a great sign. Don't expect a lot of elaboration, but you should be able to get something.
How do your fees work?
It's very important that you don't sign on with a criminal defense attorney before you have a thorough understanding of his fee schedule. Your lawyer should be more than willing to lay it all out for you in plain terms so there are no misunderstandings down the road.
Will you be handling my case?
It doesn't make a lot of sense to spend all of this time getting to know someone, asking them questions and feeling them out, only to learn that someone else will be handling your case. Ask about this before you sign up.
