Timely hiring your Fairfax criminal lawyer is critical to your defense

Timely hiring your Fairfax criminal lawyer is a critical part of your defense. The prosecutor’s office will be active in your case not long after you are arrested, if even that late, and you do not want to be going alone against a prosecutor. Even if the Fairfax judge will grant you a first-time trial date continuance for you to obtain a lawyer, you are simply not on a level playing field before you have a qualified lawyer on your side. Once you have a qualified lawyer, s/he can take advantage of the Fairfax prosecutor’s office’s usual practice of providing General District Court discovery as early as ten business days after providing that office with a draft discovery order. (UPDATE- As of November 2022, the Fairfax prosecutor’s office instead agrees to sign a proposed order to provide discovery at least ten calendar days before trial or preliminary hearing.) Furthermore, when you have a sufficiently experienced lawyer, s/he will know what to do with any prosecutorial request for a hearing, for such items as moving to amend the criminal charge against you (for instance moving to amend your Virginia DUI charging document to reflect a blood alcohol concentration test result that is 0.08 or higher.)

How do I timely find the right Fairfax criminal lawyer for me?

To help you find the right Fairfax criminal and DUI lawyer, here are my webinar and blog entry on that topic. What if you cannot afford to hire a lawyer? Then apply timely for a court-appointed lawyer. The Fairfax Public Defender’s office has some very good lawyers. While court funding for private lawyers handling indigent defense appointments is comparatively low for paying a lawyer for each case, fortunately many qualified private practicing lawyers still step up to the plate to provide such defense.

What should I expect at my first meeting with a potential Fairfax criminal lawyer?

This is your case and you should be ready to ask the tough questions to your potential Fairfax criminal lawyer for timely hiring a criminal defense lawyer, as well as to answer the tough questions from that lawyer. It is worthwhile for you to make the time for this initial Fairfax criminal lawyer consultation to be in person, for the reasons I state here. Your probably prefer to try on a pair of blue jeans at the store before paying for them — rather than ordering them online sight unseen — and it is important for you to get a true sense of your potential lawyer. Your hired lawyer will be appearing live in court — and not by Zoom in all likelihood — and you want to know what that lawyer is like up close and live.

What if I am not sure if I made a mistake with my choice of a Fairfax criminal lawyer?

Sometimes a Fairfax criminal defendant will face buyer’s anxiety over whether s/he chose the right lawyer in his or her quest to timely hire a qualified lawyer. If that nagging feeling continues past a day, then be ready to address your concerns with your lawyer and/or to obtain a second opinion from another lawyer about how your lawyer is handling your case. Sometimes that conversation with your lawyer will reveal a simply-fixed minor misunderstanding. Sometimes, that conversation will require additional conversations. And sometimes that talk will convince you to hire another lawyer. At the very least, be careful about whether changing lawyers is going to actually put you in a worse-off situation.

Fairfax criminal lawyer Jonathan Katz will be delighted to meet with you for a free initial consultation about your court-pending Virginia DUI, misdemeanor or felony case, at 703-383-1100.