This is probably a big question on a lot of people's minds. How do you hire a criminal defense attorney? I've been doing this for twenty-five years and I have a lot of people who come in that are confused. They don't know exactly what to ask.
It's not easy to go to friends or family for help, obviously, because it's embarrassing if you've been arrested and you have a criminal case pending against you. So, figuring out how to hire and attorney is important if you're concerned about your rights, your freedom, your reputation and all of the potential consequences that can flow from a criminal arrest, including conviction and sentencing.
So, I thought I would do a little article on it. Obviously, I want you to hire me, Ronald Hedding, but still, I can give you good general practical information even though you know on the back end that I think that I'm the attorney for you, but it still makes sense that I give you a feel for kinda how you should approach this thing. Contact our experienced criminal defense lawyers to review your case
Experience in Local Los Angeles County Criminal Courts
I think the first thing you want to do is get an attorney who is local to the court where your case is pending. I pretty much do cases all over Los Angeles county. I do go to other counties, but most of the cases I handle are in Los Angeles county. For example, if you had a case in Van Nuys or San Fernando, that's probably five or ten minutes from my office. I'm there all the time.
I've handled thousands of cases in those courthouses since the early 1990's, so I have a pretty good feel for how cases are going to be dealt with in those courthouses, and obviously, that's something you want in your criminal defense attorney.
You're going too want an attorney who knows the ropes; who knows what to say and who to talk to and can give you a perspective on what you can do too help in your criminal case and also give you a feel and an idea of what you're up against.
The DA's office in Los Angeles county has about a thousand DA's give or take and they just rotate Deputy District Attorneys all over Los Angeles county. So, you can see somebody in Lancaster one day and then the next day they can be in Long Beach. It's crazy how vast LA county is. There used to be forty courts. Now there's probably about twenty-five courts since they've consolidated things. That would be step number one — get somebody who knows the court where your case is.
So, if somebody calls me, I ask them which court their case is in. I can pretty much give them an idea of how that court handles those particular cases, who their judge might be, who the prosecutors are in that courthouse and kind of give them a feel for what they're up against.
Retain A Criminal Lawyer With Whom You Are Comfortable
The next thing you want to do is hire a criminal attorney who is somebody that you feel comfortable with, because if you feel comfortable with a person when you sit down and talk to them face to face, they sound like they know what they're doing, they're confident, they would command respect from a Judge and a prosecutor — then obviously the powers that be are going to feel comfortable with them — the people they have to negotiate with on your behalf, or even a jury who's going to listen to them argue their case.
So, you want to feel comfortable with that person and feel like they would represent your best interest and they can really get your points across to the prosecutor, judge and even a jury if that's necessary.
Experience In Dealing With Your Specific Charges
The next thing is you want somebody who has experience with the type of case that you're charged with. For example, if you're charged with assault with a deadly weapon or some other serious crime, you want somebody that's handled a lot of those cases.
You don't want somebody who is fresh out of law school that's basically going to be cutting their teeth on your case. You want somebody who's already been down that road, had success, knows what to do, knows what moves to make on your behalf. So, having somebody who has experience with the type of crime that you're charged with is important.
An attorney like me who has been around for twenty-five years, I've handled pretty much every crime there is. So, if you come to me and you have a case in one of the Los Angeles county courts, I'm going to ask you what type of crime you're charged with.
If it's a specialized crime like a sex crime case, a domestic violence case or a murder charge, those all have special prosecutors assigned to them in Los Angeles county, so I can give you a good feel for how they're going to prosecute the case and exactly what we can do to defend the case on your behalf.
Contact Our Los Angeles Criminal Lawyers For Help
So, those are probably the three main things that you want to look for in hiring a criminal defense attorney: being comfortable with the attorney; the attorney is local to the courthouse where your case is pending; and an attorney how has handled the type of crime that you're charged with.
So, I wrote a book. It's called The Art of the Perfect Defense. It talks about how to hire an attorney. You can go on my website — if you're on it already — you can get it for free and download it. It's a pretty easy read. It's also on Amazon, and you can review that.
The ultimate authority would be to sit down and meet with me. We'll go over your case. We'll figure out exactly what the best game plan is for you to get out of the criminal justice system as fast as possible.
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