How to Prepare for the First Meeting with Your Lawyer

I want to talk to you today about how you should prepare for your initial meeting with your initial consultation with a criminal lawyer. And this is before you have retained a lawyer. You haven’t retained a lawyer yet.  So you are charged with any type of criminal offence. Let’s say it’s an assault, as sexual assault, a D.U.I. What do you do to prepare for that meeting? Well, what I would recommend you do, number one, is you want to get your version of events, straight in your mind before that meeting. It may help you to take some notes yourself, to get your chronology down, and all the facts straight in your mind.  In order from start to finish.  It’s also, very important for you to preserve any evidence you have.  Think about that right from the outset. You want, you know, your documents, your photographs, that sort of thing. You may want to bring that to the meeting as well.  This is before you even retained this lawyer. Now at the meeting as well, you’re going to want to have a list of questions you prepare. So prepare every question you have for the lawyer that you want them to cover.  Now a good criminal lawyer, you know, when they meet with you, they are going to anticipate, almost everyone, of not every one of your questions, because this is what they do for a living.  Let’s face it.  So they are going to go over the court system, go over your case, a little bit and answer proactively, all of your questions, but if they’ve missed any, you’ve got your list there.  You won’t forget them and you can follow up with the lawyers. So that’s how you should prepare for the initial court appearance.  Or initial consultation., I should say.  And by the way, our practice at our firm. I don’t like receiving the client’s version of events. It’s not the time necessarily to receive the client’s version of events, we might go over some select facts but it can be very strategically disadvantageous for the client to relay the complete version of events at that meeting before the client actually received all of the disclosure and had a chance to refresh their memory.