Choosing The Right Attorney
Question: How Do You Decide Which Attorney To Hire If You Have Been Charged With A Sex Crime In Wisconsin?
Answer: Hiring a lawyer to defend you in a sexual assault case is a process that you need to do quickly, but you have to do with great care. You need a lawyer who has handled them before, who has won them before, who has gotten them dismissed before and who has maybe even prosecuted them before so that he or she understands the other side of the case. Many lawyers will advertise or claim they handle these cases successfully, but really the proof is in the pudding.
Anytime you sit with a lawyer and you’re talking about whether that lawyer has handled these cases before and they say they have, you ask them, “Can I have a list of your last five wins at trial? Can I have a list of the last five cases you’ve gotten dismissed? Can I have a list of the cases you’ve gotten reduced through a plea bargain to a more tolerable charge?” If they don’t give you those lists, they don’t have them.
If they give you those lists, you can look them up on the state court website and you can find out for yourself – did they or did they not succeed in this area before? Just like you wouldn’t want a heart surgeon to perform his first heart surgery on you, you wouldn’t want a lawyer to make you his guinea pig when your life is at stake.
