COMMON MISTAKES IN SELECTING A KANSAS DUI ATTORNEY:
1. Hiring your friend, friend’s dad, or your real estate attorney to represent you for a Kansas DUI charge. Not just anybody with a law license can give you effective representation in a DUI case. It is a particular area of the law. The guy that did your divorce, wrote your will or helped you sue someone may not be the guy for your DUI. In fact, even an attorney that practices general criminal defense may not have expertise in the area of DUI defense. A Kansas DUI is a whole lot different than a speeding ticket, domestic violence charge or a theft case. Also your friend or a friend’s family member may be trying to help you out, but unless he or she handles a lot of Kansas DUI’s he may hurt you more than help you.
2. Hiring the first person you get ahold of from the yellow pages. If you have not opened the yellow pages and looked under the category “attorneys”, you should. You will be amazed at the enormous number of attorneys marketing themselves in the Kansas City area, and you will have some sense of the competition for clients in this market. Anyone can buy a yellow pages ad. No one checks the accuracy of the claims made in the advertisements. You can also see from the ads that many attorneys are attempting to “do it all”, including bankruptcy, divorce, immigration, or other disparate areas of the law in addition to doing some DUI’s on the side. Some attorneys that rely on advertising and yellow pages ads may be running “fee mills” in which they count on the high volume of random people finding them in the yellow pages. They have low fees, but their aim may be to resolve cases quickly and in large numbers in order to make a living.
3. Hiring someone based on online advertising. Just like with the yellow pages and all forms of advertising, anyone can put up a webpage and declare themselves a DUI attorney. It does not necessarily make it so. One thing to watch out for is the national “pay to play” websites. There are a lot of them. These sites claim to have a stable of the best DUI attorneys in the country – all you have to do is type in the name of your state or click on a map. In reality, these sites make money by selling their web advertising space to the first attorney that comes up with the money. Many sites will offer an exclusive listing for a certain state or area of a state to lawyers in exchange for dollars. There is no vetting done to determine whether these people are competent or have any experience in litigating DUI cases – the first one to come up with the money gets a webpage and the referral of every potential client that comes to the site. Take a look at the pages of lawyers that the site offers from other states. Usually, all of the different lawyers’ pages look the same because they are just forms that the attorney advertiser fills out. They will even have the same slogans and graphics. Some of these attorneys may actually emphasize DUI cases in their practice, and be good at what they do, but some others are running a fee mill and may not be willing to actually try your DUI case. An attorney that has taken the time to invest a lot effort in a website that he or she hosts and maintains him or herself, and which provides a lot of information, is more likely to be someone dedicated to the defense of people charged with a DUI in Kansas.
4. Hiring someone based on a newspaper or magazine article. You can look at the back page of many local papers or magazines and see the ads of attorneys touting their services for one thing or another, usually DUI, bankruptcy and divorce. Often, when an attorney is just starting out, advertising this way is a good way to introduce one’s name into the marketplace and to get some clients from which to build a practice. There comes a time, though, when an attorney’s reputation in the community and the word of mouth of former clients should be able to sustain him or her. Making a decision about an attorney based solely on what you see in an advertisement may not be the best way to find a skilled attorney who will fight for you. Would you feel comfortable leaving a life-threatening illness to a doctor you found on the back of a free paper?
5. Hiring an attorney based on price. Another cliché that became a cliché because it was so true is, “You get what you pay for”. Nothing could be more accurate when it comes to lawyers. Another saying you might not have heard is “There’s nothing more expensive than a cheap lawyer”. Making the decision about who to hire based on the fee may be a very costly mistake. If you’ve had a DUI before and only paid your attorney a few hundred dollars, you recall how that worked out. A DUI charge can have serious long term financial ramifications, from fines, fees and court costs, to higher insurance, the loss of employment, driver’s license reinstatement fees, the costs of court-ordered drug and alcohol treatment programs, ignition interlock devices, “color-code” bodily fluids tests etc. Making an upfront investment in effective representation, and at least someone who knows how to navigate the system well, may save you thousands over the long term and greatly diminish the impact of this situation on your life. An attorney that is charging a high fee should be doing so based on his or her knowledge, skill and reputation in the community, as well as the amount of work that he or she intends to put into defending you. Going the cheapest route possible may get you the opposite and cost you financially and otherwise for a long time to come.