You have to consider several things if you want to hire the best lawyer. Keep in mind that you’re not just going to pay a settlement amount if you lose. It will mean prison time for you. Here are a few suggested tips if you’re looking to hire the best criminal defence attorney in Austin.
1. Turnaround Time
Turnaround time is critical in criminal defence. The amount of time it takes for your lawyer or law firm to return your call or message could spell a lot of difference. The prosecutor will do their best to find and gather enough evidence to indict you and subsequently to have you convicted by the jury.
Your criminal defence attorney should be quick to find evidence that can counter or at least cast reasonable doubt on the prosecution’s case. You’ll get a sense of this by how much time it takes before your lawyer or law firm returns your call or answers your email. This is also important in common lawsuits and criminal defence because an unfavourable outcome means prison time.
2. Years In Practice
There’s no substitute for a lawyer’s or law firm’s years of experience in legal practice. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t any brilliant young litigators who can get the case against you dismissed. But experience in legal practice and actual litigation adds significantly to the wisdom, practical legal know-how, and impressive characteristics of an excellent criminal defence attorney. Even with much experience in criminal defence, good lawyers learn new things, nuances, techniques, and tactics that add to their wisdom in practice. This enables them to become better and better at what they do as they litigate similar cases.
3. Specialisation
The years that they’ve spent in practice shouldn’t be scattered over an unorganised and disconnected array of cases. Lawyers tend to focus on a few practice areas at some point in their careers. These areas usually relate to their core competence and advancement of skills. They’re also very likely connected to their core interests going all the way back to law school.
The criminal defence lawyer that you’re going to hire should have not only years of trial practice but should’ve also specialised in the area of law that covers the crime for which you have been or will most likely be indicted. If you’ve been indicted, for instance, with possession of assault rifles, the lawyer you hire should’ve handled at least one such case in the past. Preferably, they should’ve dealt with several criminal defence cases against possession of assault rifles.
4. Winning Record
However, specialisation isn’t enough. It would be best if you also looked into what happened to all those possession cases handled by the lawyer you’re planning to hire. The outcome of those cases speaks volumes of what they’re capable of doing. You’re not asking for a perfect winning record, but it would surely be good to know how they handled those cases.
As a prospective client, you need to know how many of those cases could get dismissed without trial. This gives you an idea of whether they’re capable of putting away a criminal suit without going to battle. As a potential defendant in a criminal case trial, going to trial would significantly raise the risk of conviction. You don’t want that.
After dismissals, you’d also want to know their record of getting their clients acquitted. This reflects what they can achieve if the case has to go to a full-blown trial. It would be even better if the cases where they got acquittals were similar to yours.
5. Losing Record
But you’ll also have to look at their losses. If they’ve lost cases in the past, ask them for more information about these that they can discuss with you. You can ask them, for instance, what they think was the reason why they lost those cases. You can ask them further whether they felt they could’ve done differently to get a winning or more favourable outcome in those cases.
To the extent that they’re allowed to discuss those previous cases, you should ask whether there are any similarities between those cases and your case. It would help if you also asked whether they faced any challenges or difficulties that may be analogous to the circumstances of your case.
Conclusion
Getting a reasonable criminal defence attorney in Austin is easy enough. There are dozens of brilliant young litigators in town, raring to make a name for themselves. But if you’re the accused yourself, or one of your loved ones, you’d want nothing less than the best criminal defence lawyer to handle your case. This article talked about hiring the best criminal defence lawyer in Austin.
