Your attorney, especially in a high-stakes criminal case, is your champion.  They are the ones who know your life story and your version of events.  With the police providing a one-sided account and the prosecutors having a negative view, it's crucial to have an attorney who will fight for your rights and provide a strong defense.

What you need is someone who can present your side of the story and who will fight for you and assert all of your rights.  You need an attorney who has a track record of success in cases like yours. This is the kind of defense that can give you confidence in the face of a challenging situation.

Trying to go with somebody who doesn't know you or your circumstances and who might be overworked and just have too many cases themselves is obviously not going to work for you.  You're going to need somebody that you specifically hired that knows your story and really has a strategy as to exactly how you want to handle your criminal case in Los Angeles, because we have to look at reality. We have to look at how strong the case is against you that the prosecutors have.

Is it a case that we're going to fight at a jury trial level where we're going to have to get all the evidence and investigate and set things up so that you can be in the strongest position to fight your case, or is it a case where the prosecutors do have enough evidence to convict you of the crime, and now we have to do damage control.  We have to figure out how we can get a lesser charge — how we can keep you out of jail or prison.

All of these cases are different.  But the bottom line is that you need someone who is looking out for you — who is fighting for you and trying to do everything they possibly can to get you the best result.  Unless somebody is keyed in and targeted to help you, things are probably not going to go the way that you want, and that's a problem.

It would be best if you had the case to go your way.  It would be best if you were spun in a direction that puts you in the strongest possible position.  There's all sorts of things on the line — your freedom, your rights, your reputation, your criminal record, your future.  All sorts of rights can lost if you are convicted of a crime, whether it be a felony or a misdemeanor.  Obviously, nobody wants to go to jail or prison.

You Need A Lawyer Who Knows Your Story

That's what your attorney is there for — to stand between you and the potential consequences of a criminal case.  The first question is, how severe could the punishment be?  The key to avoiding severe punishment is a criminal defense attorney who is dedicated to protecting your future, who knows your story, and who understands what you need from this case.

When I get these cases, I'm talking to my client.  I'm saying, here's where we're at.  Here's what we're up against, and then myself and the client decide what are the parameters of things that we must have.  Once we have that locked in, now it's my job to fight for that — either to get evidence to support our plan or to get a mitigation package together for the prosecutors — to meet with the head LA county prosecutors and try to get that resolved — what we must have.  That's my job.

That's what I have to do, and that's what your champion has to do when you hire a criminal defense attorney. Criminal defense is not easy.  When you're charged with a crime, the prosecutors and the judge are not looking at you kindly. Hence, it's up to your criminal defense attorney to try to turn the tide in your favor, and there are a lot of different ways to do that, depending on the circumstances of your case.

The bottom line is that you have to hire that attorney who you feel comfortable with when you sit down and talk to them — look face to face with them.  I always meet with my clients face to face and talk to them and go over their case with them and really get a feel for who they are as a person, what happened in their case, and what we must have result-wise in order to keep their life intact and to deal with their criminal case the right way and get them out of the criminal justice system as fast as humanly possible.