Two steps to take before hiring a criminal law solicitor
Posted on: 31 July 2017
Trying to decide which criminal law attorney to hire can be challenging. Here are two pieces of advice which should help to ensure that you select the right person for your case.
Make sure that you're comfortable around them
If you're involved in a criminal case (regardless of whether you have been the victim of a crime, or whether you have been accused of committing a crime), you will need to discuss some very personal and sensitive matters with your chosen solicitor. If you do not feel comfortable enough with the solicitor to be completely open and honest about every single detail of the criminal incident, this may affect their ability to help you achieve the outcome you desire.
As such, it is essential that you take your solicitor's personality into account during the hiring process and make sure that you select someone with whom you feel entirely at ease. To determine this, you should book consultations with several criminal law attorneys in your local area. The right solicitor will react to the information you provide during the consultation in a professional and non-judgemental manner. If they are unnecessarily critical or negative and you fear this might make you hesitant to confide in them any further, then it is best not to hire them.
You should also use these meetings as an opportunity to gauge how attentive and informed each solicitor is; if they appear to not be fully engaged in the discussion (for example, if you notice that they have ignored key details about the case) or if they seem to be struggling to understand the nuances of the incident, then they may not be the right person for your particular case.
Make sure that you can easily afford their services
It is important to make sure that you can comfortably afford your chosen solicitor's fees, particularly if your case is quite complex and is likely to go on for several months.
Criminal cases are often extremely stressful for those involved. If you hire a solicitor whose services you can barely afford, this will ultimately only serve to make this already-trying experience even more upsetting.
Should you find yourself struggling with financial problems midway through your case, which result in you no longer being able to afford to pay your chosen solicitor, this could not only increase your stress levels but could also affect the case's outcome, as you may need to fire your existing solicitor and hire a less expensive one. This new solicitor would need time to get up to speed with the details of your case and as such, may struggle to help you achieve your desired outcome.
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