7 Instances of When to Hire a Criminal Defense Lawyer

Your average criminal defense lawyer will pull in roughly $78,000 per year in compensation. That’s nothing to sneeze at and is a number that has risen steadily over the years as demand for quality attorneys has gone up alongside lawsuits filed and crime rates in certain areas.

If you’re facing criminal charges, your best course of action to improve the outcome of your case is to partner with an attorney. But what kinds of criminal charges do attorneys commonly manage?

In this post, we break down instances where hiring a criminal defense lawyer makes the most sense in hopes of inspiring you to find legal counsel if you have faced or fear you might face charges.

1. Fraud

Cases of fraud are more rampant than ever with Americans losing 1.9 billion dollars per year to the crime. If you’ve been perpetuating fraud via selling faulty or fake products/services or presenting misinformation that gets people to part with their money, you could be facing sizeable fees and jail time.

With the help of a quality criminal defence, you can effectively share your side of the story to absolve yourself of such charges, or, at very least, work out a good plea deal with persecutors to limit the damage of your sentencing.

2. Assault Charges

If you hit somebody, there’s a good chance that person is going to file assault and battery charges against you. When they do, you’ll have to answer for the assault, describing why it was you committed your action and if there was reasonable cause.

Reasonable cause for an assault might include self-defense, which if proven, would absolve you of criminal charges and put those charges on the opposing party. A lawyer can help you build that case.

3. Drug Charges

While some states are relaxing criminal drug charges (California) others have severely punitive policies surrounding drug use. For example, states like Florida and Texas criminalize opioid-related drug offenses to an extent in which you can serve multiple years in prison for being caught with the drug for personal use.

If you live in a low-tolerance state, you need the support of an attorney that can help toss out circumstantial evidence related to your possession and may be able to better your sentencing by working rehabilitation provisions into it.

4. Property Defense

Another potential instance of criminal defense that changes in difficulty based on which state you live in is property defense. If someone breaks onto your property, you have the right to harm them to protect what you own and potentially, your life, right?

That depends.

Was your life in danger? Does your state give property owners more or less leeway when it comes to trespassers?

These are all things your lawyer can walk you through as they prove to courts the necessity of your actions so you can side-step repercussions that you may be facing.

5. Financial Crimes

Not all criminal charges involve hurting people physically. Some crimes involve greed which inevitably, involves money.

Things like running phony investment groups to get money from clients (think Bernie Madoff) to siphoning money from a company are blue-collar crimes that land people in prison for decades. If you’re on the receiving end of a financial crime charge, you’ll want to lawyer up.

There are a lot of intricacies to financial crimes, many of which attorneys can exploit to prove your innocence or ignorance which may work to vindicate or lessen charges related to your indiscretion.

We’ve all seen CEOs, hedge-fund managers, and several other business moguls sit in front of juries for what the public perceived to be bad crimes and walk away unscathed due to quality defense. There’s no reason that with the right legal support, you can’t enjoy the same outcome.

6. Theft

Theft charges seem pretty cut and dry, right? Did you take something that didn’t belong to you? Did you do so knowingly?

If so, you would meet the definition of having committed theft, and doing so with malicious intent could mean a more severe punishment.

But maybe there’s a gray area there. Maybe the property you took you felt belonged to you. Perhaps your ignorance regarding certain details made it an understandable inevitability that you would claim the property in question.

Your lawyer can work to cast those shadows on prosecutor’s cases in hopes of improving outcomes. So, whether or not you seem objectively guilty, it still behooves you to look over your case with a lawyer.

7. Homicide

No crime begs criminal defense lawyer support more than a homicide crime. When you’re being accused of homicide, you run the risk of life in prison or even death.

Seeing as how you’ll have nominal use for money if you get locked up for life and no use for it if you’re killed by the state, investing in quality legal defense is a quality bet.

Hire a Criminal Defense Lawyer as Soon as Possible

We’ve gone over instances in which it’s appropriate to hire a criminal defense lawyer. We’d like to further that point by also communicating the urgency of hiring one when you get into trouble.

Every moment you’re forced to navigate the legal system with a criminal attorney, you face the risk of criminalizing yourself in the way you communicate with authorities.

Don’t hamper your case, and do hire a lawyer as soon as possible so they can advocate for your interests. If you’re still curious to know about the value a defense attorney can bring, explore more content on our blog.

Share your love
Christophe Rude
Christophe Rude
Articles: 15883

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *