Saturday, May 2, 2009

Five Rules to Determine If a Criminal Defense Attorney is Good Or Not

When choosing a criminal defense attorney, the most difficult task is to determine if a lawyer is good or not. However, there are five golden rules that can make this task much easier for you. You can apply these rules everywhere irrespective of the state you belong to or the type of criminal case you are involved in. These rules are based on the fact that the trustworthiness of a lawyer depends largely on his attributes.

Being a good criminal defense lawyer requires a lot of experience, as well as knowledge. Therefore, in order to differentiate between good, bad, and mediocre lawyers, it is essential to first assess their qualities and style of working. No matter what the criminal case is, whether drunk driving, driving under the influence, drugs, fraud, assault, battery, domestic violence or others, you can use the following rules to help yourself in choosing the best criminal defense lawyer:

1) The attorney should be eager to know in detail about the background and life situation of his/her client.

This is because a good defense lawyer can make use of these facts to strike a note of sympathy with the jury and make a big difference in the case. In short, if he knows all the details of his client's life, he can easily negotiate well at sentencing.

2) He should be concerned about his client's well being and must personally care for the outcome of the case.

Needless to say, a case is very important for the accused person. Any criminal charge, whether just a simple DUI matter or a serious allegation, is bound to cause stress and anxiety in a person's social, personal, and professional life. So, Rule 2 is to make sure that the case is as important for the lawyer as it is for the person charged with the crime.

3) He should try his level best to get his client out of jail as soon as possible.

After a criminal defense lawyer is hired for a case, the first thing he is expected to do is to get his client out of jail. In order to obtain a release from jail, there are many things, such as filing a request for a supervised release, motions to get the bail reduced, or motions to get the release on their own recognizance, that can be done by criminal lawyers. Make sure the attorney you want to hire is quick in getting these formalities done.

4) While dealing with the case, he should take into account the negative influence the criminal case can have on his client's profession.

As any criminal charge can result in loss of professional licenses, the defense attorney should be well aware of whether or not you are able to plea bargain and if at all you can, what can be accepted by you as part of a plea bargain. Knowing these details is vital to get a positive outcome of the case.

5) He should maintain the privacy of his client:

A good attorney would always abide by his professional ethics and maintain the confidentiality of all your details involved in the case.

These five rules are nothing but five essential attributes that a good criminal defense attorney must have. Be it a San Francisco DUI attorney, San Francisco criminal defense attorney, Oakland DUI lawyer, or any criminal lawyer from elsewhere in the country, these rules should be applied everywhere to make sure you hire the best lawyer to fight your case.

To find Criminal Lawyers in your Locality, check out an extensive state-wise attorney directory, listing over 10,000 lawyers across 500 cities in the US, at Lawyerucla.com to help get you going.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Eshwarya_Patel

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