Working together with your criminal defense lawyer, rather than being standoffish and cold will be the best way to help ensure that your case is as well-prepared as it can be. Because of that, it’s important to know how to talk to your lawyer should you ever be in need of support from a criminal defense firm like goldmanwetzel, for example.
So, with that said, here is some advice on how you should talk and communicate with your criminal defense lawyer.
Be thorough
Your criminal defense lawyer is there to defend you, whether wholly innocent or not. It’s their duty to you, their client, to seek the best possible legal outcome.
In order to plan and formulate the best defense possible, it’s crucial that your lawyer knows as much about the case as you do. Think of any detail you can that might be relevant. Even then, something you might think of as a fairly small detail might be more important when looked at from the point of view of a criminal defense lawyer.
In Sarasota County, in 2018, there were 11,514 arrests for a population of 412,880, which is almost 4.8%. While that might not sound like much over the course of a year, a good defense lawyer could be there in your corner when you need them the most.
Don’t hide information
Following on from that the advice to be thorough is trying to avoid the fear of saying certain things in front of your criminal defense lawyer. Maybe you think that they won’t want to defend you if you reveal something about the case that you’ve been holding back. In that case, remind yourself about lawyer/client confidentiality – Communications between yourself and your lawyer are secret. By holding information back, you risk jeopardizing your case
If your lawyer goes out and defends you without a full and clear understanding of your role, whatever that may be, in a case, there’s a significant risk that the prosecution now knows something your lawyer doesn’t.
If that is the case, you will have weakened your defense, while allowing the prosecution to score some points against you in the process. On the other hand, however, that also demonstrates how being as honest as you can could be a benefit to your case. What if you do decide to mention a crucial detail that the prosecution’s client chooses to leave out? Things like that could come back to benefit your case overall.
Some lawyers take different stances on how they approach their relationship with their clients. For example, your lawyer might try to frame you as 100% guilty from day one, but this would just be part of their overall defense strategy – by looking at it as if you were guilty, even if you’re 100% innocent, they might be able to formulate a stronger defense that secures your freedom than if they went in without considering all possibilities.
Cooperate with them
One of the things you might experience during a trial is a range of exercises that your lawyer wants you to do in order to perform better when you’re being asked questions by a prosecution lawyer looking for ways to trip you up.
This could be in the form of pseudo-interrogating you to help you better stand up to intense lines of questions, or having you memorize key phrases and sentences to repeat during a trail at key points.
Everything your criminal defense lawyer does with you is designed to help create a more successful defense with the aim of securing either your freedom or the best possible sentence you could get in the circumstances, which is why it’s so important to have an expert on your side every step of the journey.
Author information: Hannah Simpson has been writing for more than 6 years with a specific focus on the legal sector, an interest developed from time spent working in marketing for large law firms. Weekends are spent hiking in the countryside with her dog and partner.
