Having practiced in Los Angeles for 25 years, worked for the District Attorney's office and also worked for a Superior Court judge, I think I have a pretty good idea about the inner workings of the Los Angeles criminal defense community, and obviously the Los Angeles criminal court system.

One of the biggest I see is I read other attorneys websites and I can tell that 90+% of the websites were not written by the attorney.  So, you basically have website companies putting content on the site, putting information on these sites and a lot of the time a lot of the information is not accurate.

Everything on my website here I wrote.  It was brought about by years of experience, trial and error, working in the system, and pretty much having a full well-rounded idea of how the criminal system works.

Not All Criminal Websites Were Written By Attorneys

That's probably one of the first things you really have to be aware of, that a you're reading these websites not all of them were written by attorneys, so the question becomes, what does a website company know about criminal defense?  How can they really give you any insight into criminal defense:?  So, bear that in mind.

The reason I know this in addition to reading some of the sites, I'm getting calls from people who are looking for attorneys and they're making statements to me that are not accurate.  So, I'm asking them, where are you getting that information from?  And they're getting it from reading websites.

They're also getting it from talking to people on the phone.  A lot of times if you're not talking to an attorney on the phone and you're talking to an attorney's staff member who doesn't know what they're talking about.

Of course there's people who work in offices — like my office manager has worked for me for over 20 years.  He knows what he's talking about.  He's been doing this a long time.  He's seen the result in cases.  He's talked to a lot of people.  Him and I have coordinated and worked together.

So, when you call my office you're going to get somebody who knows what they're talking about, who knows the system, who knows about the charges, he knows about the prosecutors and judges.

That's your first thing.  You're on the internet.  You're trying to find an attorney and a lot of the information on the internet is not accurate.  If you start reading some of these websites, it's just a bunch of garbly-goop.

They're not giving you any good solid practical information.  They're giving you generalizations and they're just filling in their website.  So, bear that in mind when you read some of this stuff.

Many Criminal Websites Don't Make Any Sense

A lot of people see that because a lot of people who call me or when they come in, they tell me they were reading something on a website and it doesn't even make any sense what they're talking about in there.  They're geared towards oh yeah, we're going to get your case dismissed.

Wait a minute, you don't even know anything about my case.  Why don't you get all the information about my case?  That's one of the biggest things in criminal defense also.  How are you going to get a case dismissed if you don't have all the information on the case?

Unfortunately, when people are scared and they're embarrassed and they're hoping that they can get rid of this albatross around their neck — their criminal case — they're going to feed the attorney or whoever they're talking to all the information that's positive for them.

I play heck trying to get people to give me the information that might be negative to them.  In other words, what are the police and prosecutors going to say because I need to know the other side of the equation before I can start solving the problem.

So, that's one of the biggest things — and I talk about it in my book, The Art of the Perfect Defense.  Give me the information first from the prosecutor and police point of view.  I want to hear what they're going to try to say against you, then we can turn around and start to dissect it and attack it and look at some defenses in the case, look for some mitigating information and look to do damage control on the case.

Talk to a Veteran Battle-Tested Criminal Defense Lawyer

So, if you want to know the skinny about criminal defense, you have to talk to a seasoned, veteran, battle-tested criminal defense attorney.  You don't need to read some website that's been set up by a web company.  That doesn't do you any good.

All they're going to be able to do is generalize and give you the most basic of information and unfortunately, some of the information is not accurate.  Think about it.  How could it be accurate?  What does a website designer know about criminal defense?

You want to talk to somebody that has been inside the courtroom that's tried cases.  I've tried over 250 jury trials.  You want somebody who knows how to deal with the prosecutors and judges and who knows what it takes to get a result.

As you read through my website, obviously I couldn't get everything in here.  I'd be talking for days about all the different angles and concepts related to criminal defense.  So, if you want to get the accurate information, in addition to reading my website, obviously you're going to need to come in and sit down with me.

Give me the paperwork that you have on the case.  Let's sit down and talk about it.  Let's go through it step by step.  All this website is and all the information that' sin here is foundational to criminal defense in Los Angeles.

It's foundational in the first step towards dealing with your case.  You want to talk about winning your case.  Of course, everybody wants to win their criminal defense case, but the question becomes in your case, what truly is a win.

You Need a Criminal Lawyer Who Can Beat The Prosecutor

In other words, can your attorney take the case to trial?  Can your attorney beat the prosecutors and show the jury that you're innocent, because if your attorney can't do that, then obviously trying to get that sort of a win is not realistic in your case and it doesn't make any sense, so don't even aim for that.

If they've got evidence against you that you committed the crime, then obviously you're going to need to figure out a way to do damage control.  You're going to need to hire an attorney that can bring forth the mitigating information about you.

One who can show that your scenario is an aberration — not going to happen again — and show all the mitigating facts because when the police set up a criminal case, they're usually setting up all geared to showing every bad thing about a particular criminal defendant.

Whereas when the defense sets the case up, they're gearing it up towards showing all the good stuff about a particular defendant and showing the other side of the story.

Unfortunately, the defense attorney doesn't get to talk to the police before they present all the information to the prosecutors, so you have a scenario where the prosecutors are only getting all of the bad stuff.

Prefiling Intervention, Plea Bargaining, Jury Trial

That's where we have to start to turn the tide and that's where we're going to talk about some important topics here, like pre-filing intervention.  We're going to talk about plea bargaining.  We're going to talk about how to relate and deal with the judge and prosecutor in a criminal case.  We're going to talk about a jury trial.

What if you have to take your case to jury trial?  What if you're innocent.  God forbid you've been charged with a criminal case and you are stone-cold innocent.  What are you going to do then?  Does that mean just because you're innocent that you're going to win everything?

No, it doesn't because the prosecutors obviously have some sort of information against you or you wouldn't be charged with a crime or maybe you're being investigated for a crime, or the police have some information from somewhere.

So, why do they have that information?  Who gave it to them and what are we going to do to try and defend your case?  That becomes the question in this important endeavor in your life.

Probably one of the most important endeavors because of all the things that are on the line.  Your freedom is on the line.  Your reputation is on the line.  Your liberty, your justice, your way of life, your control of your life is on the line.

Retain a Seasoned Criminal Defense Lawyer

So, if you're looking for a seasoned criminal defense attorney that knows the Los Angeles criminal defense system and the process and how it works, you've come to the right place.  You've taken the first step and you don't even know it.

Read one of my books that relates to your topic to get that foundation that you need.  You can get it on Amazon very easily.  Review it.  If you're looking for somebody who knows how to cross-examine a witness because there's a crucial witness in your case that is going to have to be discredited, get my tape series on cross-examination.

You can see that I've been doing this for a long time and I have a substantial legal background.  Here's to getting your case resolved in the most powerful manner based on the circumstances of your alleged crime and here's to moving on with your life and getting out of the criminal justice system as fast as possible.

Hedding Law Firm is a criminal defense law firm located in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles County at 16000 Ventura Blvd #1208 Encino, CA 91436. We are also located at 633 West Fifth Street Los Angeles, CA 90071. Contact us for a free case evaluation at (213) 542-0979.