Zach Westerfield, Colorado DUI Attorney (Interview Transcript):

 

Richard Jacobs of myDUIAttorney.org sits down with Zach Westerfield, a criminal and DUI attorney out of Denver, Colorado. A must-read for anyone facing a drinking and driving-related charge within the state of Colorado or beyond.

 

RJ: What made you choose to handle DUI and why do you practice this area of law?

ZW: Well, I initially started off my legal career doing criminal law working for the Public Defender’s office and what I was doing at the Public Defender’s office was mostly major cases, felony murder, stuff like that. And I noticed that there was a lot of people, that the most common crime that the average Joe if you will, committed was the DUI. I noticed that there were a lot of people who weren’t getting representation and they kind of thought that there was nothing that a lawyer could do for them. As I started to get into that particular situation and research it a little bit more I thought that it was a definitely an area of the law that I would like to practice and to help people out. Because like I said, it is the most common thing that the average Joe citizen who isn’t a felon or anything like that, is going to have to deal with, and the fact that it can affect your license, it can affect your job, it can affect your family, are all reasons that I decided to practice in that area. Also, it is interesting work. You get to meet a lot of different people and do constitutional law as well, so I enjoy it.

 

RJ: How many DUI cases have you handled and in what time period would you say?

 

ZW: It’s hard to say, I don’t keep track of every single DUI case that I handle, I don’t have a running total but it’s over a hundred, and I’ve been doing it for about four years now.

 

RJ: I know you talked about the average Joe, but is there a typical circumstance that they have? Is there more men than women, or more first time offenders? Younger people, older people?

 

ZW: Well, that’s actually a pretty interesting question, because in my practice I’ve found that there really isn’t any particular set of circumstances or factors or demographics that DUIs apply to. They apply to men, they apply to women, they apply to people who are under 21, people who are in their early 20s, people who are much older, different racial backgrounds, first time offenders, multiple offences, I see quite a few different things and I don’t think that statistically speaking there is one demographic that shows a stronger trend toward receiving a DUI than any other particular demographic. And that’s kind of what I find fascinating about it, it seems to be one of the few criminal offenses that affects people of all walks of life, all socio-economic, racial, age backgrounds, all those things.

 

RJ: What percentage of your clients have a blood alcohol level that is close to the legal limit, versus much higher?

 

ZW: Well, the way that it works in Colorado is that you can be charged with a DWAI which is known as ‘Driving While Ability Impaired’ if you have a BAC that’s actually registered by a breath test or a blood test of .05 to .09. And I’ve only had a few cases where someone has come to me and their BAC was in the DWAI range, the vast majority of cases people have a BAC that is greater than .08, which puts them in the DUI or Driving Under the Influence category, the more serious of the two charges. I have a few cases where people are in the higher range in Colorado, where it’s mandatory jail time even for a first offence, when you have a BAC that is higher than .20, so I do have a few of those cases, but the majority of cases rest between that .10 and .18 range, that’s where the majority of my cases fall. But really the range can go anywhere from .05 all the way up I’ve seen to .40.

 

RJ: Wow.

 

ZW: Yeah, basically, that person has a serious problem.

 

RJ: I’m surprised they’re alive!

 

ZW: Absolutely.

 

RJ: What percentage of your cases have gone to trial versus being settled out of court?

 

ZW: That’s a good question and that’s usually something that I do keep track of. For us, about 7% of the cases we handle go through a full-blown trial. There’s lots of different things that can happen before getting to the full jury trial phase and that could include going to a motions hearing, maybe arguing that the stop was conducted illegally under the Fourth Amendment, or some other issue with the evidence that the prosecution wants to present has a problem. So a much higher percentage I’d say have gone to motions hearings, but in terms of full-blown trial, it’s about 7%.

 

RJ: OK, that seems fairly low.

 

ZW: It is relatively low, but it’s a little higher than what the average is for most criminal cases. It also varies by jurisdiction here in Colorado as well, that’s probably something else to note, not each jurisdiction here, and by jurisdiction we’re talking about each county because a DUI is a charge that’s going to occur in a county court setting – not each county handles them the same way. So some counties seem to have higher thresholds for what’s going to happen, how they’re going to deal with it, some counties seem to be a little bit more lenient. So depending on that county, also depends whether or not on whether that case is going to go to trial, depending on whether we can work something out in terms of a plea agreement with the DA’s office. So that’s also something that’s important to consider, is what county is your DUI going to be prosecuted in.

 

RJ: Interesting. That leads into the next question. What’s unique about the DUI laws in your particular county and state? Can you say more about that?

 

ZW: Absolutely. Well the first thing is, the way that the prosecution views a DUI case is going to vary greatly from county to county. So, for example, in Jefferson county, I tend to have more cases go to trial, because they’re not really as willing to sit down and work out a plea-agreement. Obviously, when you start talking about mandatory jail time, that’s another reason why things may change, and you may want to go to trial, and in Colorado, mandatory jail time occurs either on a second drinking and driving offence, or even on a first drinking and driving offence if your BAC is greater than .20. So they don’t really call it an “aggravated” DUI like they do in some other states or jurisdictions, but that’s basically what it amounts to because it’s mandatory jail time even for a first time offence, depending on what your BAC is. I think the other thing that’s important to know about the laws of the state of Colorado is how being charged with a DUI affects you not only in terms of the criminal justice system, but also with the Department of Motor Vehicles, and in Colorado, those are two separate and distinct events. So, when you get charged with a DUI normally you’re going to have to deal with the criminal element in county court, but you’re also going to have to separately deal with your driver’s license at the DMV, and deal with that administrative procedure. So it kind of creates an interesting situation where you’re dealing with administrative law, and your license and the status of your driver’s license with the DMV, and then you’re also dealing with the DA’s office, the county court, and the criminal side of things. They are two separate things. You can technically retain your driver’s license and resolve your DUI in a particular manner that won’t cause you to lose your driver’s license at the criminal side of things. Vice versa or mix and match. So people need to be aware that there’s two separate events, and also in Colorado a very limited amount of time once you are charged with a DUI to request that hearing with the DMV. And if you don’t request that hearing with the DMV within a certain period of time, then you automatically have your driver’s license suspended.

 

RJ: I’m sure that people don’t know that they’re essentially going to have to deal with two sets of charges.

 

ZW: Yeah it’s not really charges, as one is administrative, it’s a different burden of proof but there’s two separate events, is the best way to think about it. One is strictly dealing with the state Department of Revenue which is in control of the Motor Vehicle department, and that has to do with the status of your driver’s license, and that’s also where if you’re going to have to have anything like SR-22 insurance, or if you’re going to have to drive your vehicle with interlock, all these tasks are going to occur on the administrative side of things. The court never imposes those requirements.

 

RJ: What’s your best tip when someone has been drinking a little or a lot and the police has pulled them over and is walking up to them? What should they do, what shouldn’t they do?

 

ZW: Well, I think that one of the things that we see a lot of, is people want to be honest with the police and that tends to be a good thing, but they go with “Well, I only had a couple of beers officer” and to be honest with you officers hear that so much especially within the context of a DUI stop, that trying to be honest that you only had a couple of beers, you’re just not going to be believed. So if the police officer asks you if you have been drinking and driving, the first thing I would recommend is remaining silent on that issue, you don’t have an obligation to respond to that, unless you really only had one beer, but it’s pretty rare circumstances that that’s the case. The second thing is that in Colorado, when you’re stopped and the police officer believes that you have been drinking and driving, one of the things that they’re going to ask you to do is to exit the vehicle and do a set of roadside maneuvers, and doing those roadside maneuvers is basically going to determine whether or not the officer has probable cause to arrest you or, if the officer believes you are not under the influence, is going to let you go. The most important thing to know about those roadside maneuvers is that those are 100% voluntary, there’s not penalty under Colorado law or the DMV that requires that you participate in those roadside maneuvers. So obviously if you’ve been pulled over and you’ve been drinking and you don’t feel like you’re going to pass those, it might be a situation where if you’re thinking properly, and oftentimes if you’ve been drinking, you’re not, maybe not performing those roadside maneuvers, because they are 100% voluntary.

 

The other thing is that once the police officer determines that there’s probable cause to arrest you they’re going to have enough probable cause to ask you to submit to a chemical test under the ‘Express Consent’ law in the state of Colorado. So if you’re driving on any Colorado road or highway, you’ve already consented to taking a chemical test if the officer asks you to do that. And in the context of an alcohol-related DUI you have the choice between a breath test and a blood test. Technically, the decision to take any type of chemical test is voluntary, there are penalties though associated in choosing not to take a test. That could be a full one year loss of your driver’s license, with no chance of any type of probationary or restricted license, and as well if you go to trial the prosecution could introduce that you refused to take any test as proof of guilt, i.e. you chose not to take the test because you knew you’d fail it.

 

So generally it’s a better idea to take the test. What test you want to take is up for debate. The blood test is more accurate, there’s also more moving parts associated with that because generally you have to go to an EMT or firehouse to get that done, but the other benefit with a blood test is that you can re-test it, they usually do two samples, so you can verify the results independently, so kind of hard to say what’s better, a blood test or breath test, because it’s going to depend upon circumstance. But in some cases, like I said, the blood test is more accurate, and you also have a chance to retest it.

 

RJ: When you talk about refusing the field sobriety test, what literally would you say to the officer?

 

ZW: That’s always a tough question to answer in the context of a DUI stop because if the person is under the influence they are probably not going to be thinking 100% properly so you’re not going to be having a “normal” conversation with the police officer. But if you have your head on straight and you’re thinking pretty normally, the way that I would present it to the police officer is by saying, “You know officer, my understanding is that what you are asking me to do is 100% voluntary, is that correct?” “Yes, sir. That’s correct. Yes, ma’am, that’s correct.” “Well, then because it’s 100% voluntary, and not mandatory, I’m going to choose not to participate in that.” Also, there’s other good reasons not to participate in that, because a lot of times those tests can yield what I call “false positives”. For example, if you’ve ever had a knee or ankle surgery, or if it’s cold outside, or you don’t have good balance, a lot of times the studies over the years have shown, people who are completely sober can fail those tests. So if you have physical limitations, that’s also a good reason not to participate in them. If you’ve ever had a head injury or you were involved in an accident as part of the DUI investigation, maybe you don’t want to do the horizontal gaze nystagmus test, because you don’t feel that it’s going to produce accurate or fair results. So there could be lots of explanations that you give to the police officer about why you don’t want to do it, but the most important thing is to always be polite and to remember that they are in fact voluntary. That’s the main thing.

 

RJ: So what percentage of success have you had in getting a DUI charge knocked down to a reckless driving charge, or in reducing fines, or getting rid of jail time, things like that?

 

ZW: Absolutely. Well, I can say that in every case we’ve been successful to some extent in getting fines reduced, or getting alternative jail sentences imposed if there’s mandatory jail time because it’s a multiple offence or because the BAC is greater than .20. I have had a number of cases that have resulted in what they call a “wet reckless driving offences” but those are pretty rare. In Colorado, there’s a statute that basically prevents the District Attorney’s office from pleading down a drinking and driving offence to a non-drinking and driving offence, unless they can show to the court, and they usually have to make an offer of proof to the judge of good cause. Basically, they think would lose at a motion’s hearing, or the BAC was really, really low, like very close to the .05 limit. But I’ve definitely had some of those circumstances happen and arise, based upon whatever it may be, an improper stop by the police officer or what not. So yeah, we’re able to get something for everybody, they never get the full book thrown at them, I’ve never had that situation occur, and every time we’ve gone to trial, the goal is obviously to win, we’ve either completely won at trial, or the major charge, the DUI charge was dismissed and maybe there was a conviction on the lesser included offence like a DWAI or some other minor traffic offence.

 

RJ: Is it wise to take a DUI case to trial or to settle instead, if it’s a non-aggravated DUI?

 

ZW: Well it depends on circumstance, each individual case is different and I think that’s why it’s important, that if you’re facing a DUI charge that you contact an attorney and talk to that attorney about your particular circumstances. It’s very hard to generalize because each case is going to be a unique set of circumstances, and so the very first thing you are going to look at is how were you contacted by the police, was it an investigatory stop, or was it a consensual encounter with the police, were you driving the vehicle, were you not driving the vehicle, what does it mean to be driving the vehicle. There’s an odd legal definition of what it means to be driving at least in the state of Colorado, it’s really more about did you have physical control over the vehicle than were you actually in motion with the car on and moving. What exactly happened with the roadside maneuvers, was there probable cause to arrest you. What happened with the chemical tests, was it a blood test, was it a breath test. Were all the particular rules followed that go into those different things and based upon what we may or may not find in the investigation of your case, it may be that there’s a significant problem with the prosecution’s case. And if that’s the case, that’s when you take it to trial. Or, the other circumstance in which you take it to trial is when the person is facing jail time, they have a job, or family circumstances, there’s all different kinds of circumstances where you may take it to trial. Even for a person that’s a first offence and it’s not an aggravated situation, you know, the burden of proof in any criminal case is always on the prosecution and sitting down and talking with myself, we’re going to sit down and determine whether or not the police have basically done what they’re supposed to do, and whether or not they have a case that can be won at trial, or whether or not it was a situation where mistakes were made or questions are unanswered and maybe we want to push the situation or push the envelope. Like I said, not all cases necessarily go to trial, a lot of times they get resolved at a motions hearing.

 

RJ: So what have you learned about people’s reaction and behavior when they’ve been arrested for DUI? What insight do you have into this whole process?

 

ZW: Well, I think that, the way that I started off our discussion today is really something that can inform the first part of that question, and that is, I see DUIs from people who are from all walks of life, people who make a lot of money and have high-paying jobs, to people who you would consider the more, quote unquote, typical criminal element. Really a DUI can affect anybody. And so that’s probably the first thing I’d say that I’ve noticed. Especially people who have never been involved with the criminal justice system, and wouldn’t necessarily consider themselves criminals. You know, you go out to dinner with a couple of friends, you have a glass of wine, or a couple of glasses of wine with dinner, you get in your car and leave and before you know it, you’re getting charged with a DUI. So for a lot of people, it’s their first experience with the criminal justice system. They’ve never had anything more than a real minor traffic ticket, so it’s the first time they’ve been arrested, it’s the first time that they may or may not have had to deal with jail, or being put into a holding cell, or possibly having to deal with bonds, having their car possibly towed, having to pay for all those expenses, having to talk to an attorney. Maybe the first time that they’ve had to do any of those things, and so oftentimes what I see is that people are unsure of the process, not necessarily confident that they’re going to be able to resolve the situation on their own, and they want advice, and that’s exactly what a lawyer is there to do, to provide that experience, to provide that advice, to guide them through the process, and to let them know what’s going on with their case. And so that’s basically what you see, at least in my experience. And for people with a very high BAC, or a multiple offence, they’re looking at jail time and you know maybe on their first DUI, maybe they didn’t have an attorney, they went in and resolved it, kind of got slapped on the hand, but now they’re in a situation where they’re facing possibly up to a year in jail. And they have a family, or they’re a single mother or father, or they’re the main breadwinner for they’re family, or whatever the situation may be, and obviously losing your freedom is very serious. Maybe someone has to drive for work and the whole DUI context is going to cause them to lose their license or have some type of restricted license and that’s going to cause them to get fired. So you see all kinds of circumstances and all kinds of things that people are facing, and really as an attorney you’re there to help them through not just the legal system but also a lot of times on how this is going to impact them in their personal and professional life as well.

 

RJ: What do you tend to hear all the time? Are there any common stories that you are hearing over and over when people are coming to you?

 

ZW: Well I guess you can break it down to the most common thread possible, and that is people were usually out having a good time with friends or family members and were out drinking in some situation, usually some social situation, and they decided to drive, and they got caught in trouble for that. That’s probably the most common thing, and that may not be the answer you were looking for, it’s maybe a bit too common, but that’s usually what it is. People are out at some type of social function, a party, a get-together, they’re out with friends, they’re out to dinner, and they’re out driving. I’ve had a couple of cases where I’ve dealt with people who have serious addictions to alcohol and those are obviously unique to themselves, but the vast majority of situations are just situations like I said, where the average Joe citizen is out in a social setting, drinks a little too much and then has that ability to take that decision to drive or to take a cab home, or to have a designated driver, and then they make the bad choice when they’re drinking, because they are drinking usually to drive home. And that’s probably the most common set of circumstances that you hear. I mean, you know as an attorney, I tell people, tell me the truth, tell me what did you actually have. So I don’t get that, “Well, I only had one drink,” maybe that’s what they tell the police officer. It’s important for people to tell me the truth so that way I can properly defend them. Or what will happen is that people will say, “You know I only really had two or three beers,” and then you say, “OK, what kind of beer were you having? What size, was it a draft beer or a bottled beer?” and they say “Oh it was a draft beer.” Well you know how it is at restaurants now, they say, do you want the short, or do you want the tall?” Well, the short beer is a 16oz beer which is already more than one drink, so you have two pints, or what they often call at restaurants or bars, “shorties”, even though you’ve technically only had two glasses of draft beer, it’s technically more than two drinks. You know you are already at 32oz, not 24. Or maybe someone said they had two drinks but they were drinking the tall ones, which are the 25oz drinks. You see that a lot here in Colorado restaurants, serving beer in 25oz glasses, and if you have two of those, that’s 50oz that’s more than four drinks! So people who say “Well I only had two beers, officer.” Well, how much were you really drinking. And also, if it was two mixed drinks, oftentimes bars will do what they call a “free pour” so they’re not actually pouring 4.5oz of 80 proof alcohol in there, they are mixing different alcohol and they’re free-pouring, so you may have only had two mixed drinks, but the actual number of drinks you’ve had is a lot more. So usually people will be honest with me and tell me what they’ve actually had to drink or people just wont realize what they’ve had to drink because they thought they had two or three and really what they’ve had is four to six. So that’s also something that I see that’s pretty common here, people think they are drinking less than they really are. The other thing that I see is the police report tends to look pretty common, I think that the police have been doing this long enough to know what they need to get to make the situation go forward and to have any prosecution be an effective prosecution, so it’s really common to see, “this person had bloodshot and watery eyes, they had an odor of an alcoholic beverage and they didn’t perform the voluntary roadside maneuvers to the satisfaction of the police officers.” So in that sense a lot of times when you get the report from the police officers, they tend to look very similar.

 

RJ: That’s really interesting because noone ever talks about the size of the drinks at the bar, so I’m glad you talked about that.

 

ZW: Yeah, I think that’s important for people to understand, because like I said a lot of times people are out and they are trying to be cautious, because people are pretty cautious about the whole DUI thing, and you know, they’re not trying to drive drunk on purpose, so they’re thinking that they’ve had x number of drinks, over x period of time, and they just calculated incorrectly.

 

RJ: So do you feel that the current DUI punishments are too harsh, are they too lax, and why?

 

ZW: Well one interesting thing that I’ll say about that is that there’s quite a bit of discretion on the part of the individual judge who is going to impose sentences, so I don’t know that I can make a general statement about DUI sentencing being too harsh or too lenient, because it comes down a lot, at least in Colorado, to what the individual judge thinks. And I have to say there are some judges in some jurisdictions who are pretty well known, who are considered to be very harsh, there’s other judges who seem to be more fair. I would say overall, for people who make an honest mistake and for a first offence, usually if we can sit down and go over the situation and come up with a pretty good defense, whether it’s a plea deal or otherwise, I would say that most times the prosecution and the judge are pretty fair. Now you start to get to people with multiple offences, it depends. Sometimes the judge just wants to throw the person in jail and the person really has an addiction problem, a true addiction problem, and jail isn’t necessarily the right answer. So oftentimes with people who have had multiple offences who have actual addiction problems I would say sometimes the sentences tend to be a little too harsh in my opinion because they focus more on incarceration rather than rehabilitation, and maybe that’s just a shortcoming of the legal system. They’re not really adequately prepared or have the know-how or the ability or the funding or whatever it may be to provide the necessary rehabilitation for the people.

 

RJ: What do you see as the future of DUI in terms of the punishments and number of offenders?

 

ZW: Well, I think that it’s very clear what’s going to happen with DUI as we move forward in the future. I think that it’s something that people can stand up and say, “Oh hey look, this is a serious problem, you need to get tough on crime, we need to do something about the disparity in sentences between judges, between offenders, we need to get more serious about it, we need to make the penalties harsher” and that’s exactly what we’re seeing. I mean if you look back historically at DUI laws and how they’ve changed, the punishment has only ever gotten harsher and so there’s no reason to think that that’s going to change in the future, the punishment will continue to become harsher and I think that in some point in time, you’re going to see Colorado really impose something that may be relating to an habitual offender type of situation, or multiple offender situation, or really more of a felony situation, where you could be looking at a DUI or a multiple DUI and be looking at a felony where that’s not necessarily the case now. The laws have changed, you know, we went from having a DUI level but no DWAI at .15 to DUI at .10 and DWAI which never used to exist at .05, and now the DUI level is down to .08, so the standard has become more strict and as the standards become more strict you’ll also see an increase in the rise of punishment, and I think that there will be an increase in penalties for people and their ability to drive, and at the Department of Motor Vehicles. I think you’re going to continue to see people getting DUIs because when people are out, and our society encourages people to go out and be social, and to go out to restaurants, and to go to bars, and to drink and that’s not going to change, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes when people do that they make poor decisions, and oftentimes, that involves driving. So I think you’re going to see people continuing to get DUI charges, and until they take away parking lots in bars, there’s no reason to believe that it’s not going to continue to be an issue and it’s going to be something that people are going to have to pay attention to and really get legal help and legal advice on because, the penalties will get stiffer, the restrictions will get stiffer, and the consequences will be more and more serious.

 

RJ: What’s the ballpark cost of a DUI, start to finish, assuming it’s not aggravated?

 

ZW: In terms of legal expenses, or total expenses?

 

RJ: Break it down between legal and total.

 

ZW: It kind of depends upon the situation. The way our law firm does it is by giving people the option to pay by the hour or working on a flat fee, and each circumstance is going to be a little bit different depending upon the seriousness of the charge, how many prior offences that person has, are they charged with DWAI, are they charged with DUI, what type of tests did they do, there’s all kinds of factors, so it’s going to vary, the costs are going to vary. But I would say on average you are going to be looking at legal expenses of at least $2500, and if you go to trial you’re going to be looking at more than that, and then you’re going to be looking at additional expenses. You’re going to be looking at $1000-$2000 in court costs and fines, you’re going to have to pay increased insurance rates for having to carry SR-22 insurance, as well as having a major traffic violation on your record, you’re looking at having to do DUI classes, what they call level 2 alcohol education, and possibly therapy, here in Colorado, and those things run about $15 or so per hour and usually you’re looking at a minimum of 24 hours, all the way up to 96 hours if you have to do a lot of therapy, that can get expensive. You’re looking at having to do community service and pay fees and bonds for that, you’re also looking at some other incidental expenses that you’re going to have to run into. One of the conditions may be some kind of sobriety monitor either while you’re on bond, while your case is pending, or it may be a condition of probation if you receive, so you may have to do random breath tests, or urine analysis tests, or maybe have to do something more serious, like a SCRAM device, or get the interlock device installed in your vehicle, that costs money to install, there’s a monthly rental fee, the cost to uninstall, so the costs can spiral upwards. So the cost of a DUI from what I’ve seen, including legal fees, can run upwards of $10,000.

 

RJ: Wow, it’s almost as bad as buying a home!

 

ZW: Yeah exactly, you think you’re just paying for the cost of the home, and then you get the paperwork, and there’s this fee for that, and this fee for that. And it’s nowhere near as fun as buying a home, and I didn’t even mention all the expenses. There’s bonds, there’s fees if your car gets towed, there’s quite a few things that can happen. Obviously a lot of those things can be avoided with successful legal representation or be minimized with successful legal representation, but the absolute honest answer, the best way to avoid those costs, is to avoid getting in the car while you’re under the influence.

 

RJ: What makes your firm unique in providing DUI defense and what kind of personal statement do you want to make to potential clients reading this interview?

 

ZW: Well the first thing that makes our firm unique is that I try to deal with everybody on a very personalized, individual basis. I do my best to have my clients contact me by phone, so if they call me, they’re going to be getting me on the phone, or I’m going to be returning the phone call in a timely manner. When they show up for a consultation, I’m the owner of the firm, I’m going to be sitting down and meeting with them, and if we go to trial, I’m going to be the person in 99.9% of time, unless there’s an emergency that I can’t avoid, I’m going to be the one in court there with you. So lots of times at other firms, you’ll call and talk to a paralegal or to a legal secretary and you won’t necessarily be able to talk to the attorney. Or the attorney will tell you that they’re going to take on your case and send out a different lower-level attorney like an associate to handle your case and there they are in court calling out your name, because they’ve never met you before. So I’ve got all the experience, and I try to do that personal touch where you do all the communications, and meetings, and court appearances with me. The other thing is I have a lot of experience doing DUI defense work, that’s the niche that our firm is working in and so you’re hiring someone that’s got a lot of experience, not only with the Public Defender’s office, but also working as a private attorney to handle DUI cases. And the other thing that I think is important is that it’s important for an attorney to be honest with their client. A lot of people are not going to want to tell you, “well, this is what’s going to happen, here’s what we’re going to be able to do,” they get a retainer fee right away, and then they’re not able to deliver on those promises because they haven’t been honest with their client. I try to be honest. If it’s a situation where the client can do whatever it is that needs to be done without an attorney, I try to be honest and say “hey, look this is a situation where without hiring attorney, you can probably get the same result as what I can.” Other things we try to do, is work with our clients in terms of payments. Like I said previously, we give clients the option of paying by the hour or paying by a flat fee basis, and then also clients need help on that, maybe they want to do a flat fee, but they want to do a payment plan, or a payment schedule, that’s usually something we can work out with people. So we try not have cost be a barrier to legal representation. The other thing is, whenever we take on a DUI case I try to do representation for both the criminal side of things as well as the administrative side with the DMV, so when you hire me on, it includes both the DMV and the county court, and I have a lot of experience with both those processes and even going through the appellate process of that administrative process.

 

Watch Zach Westerfield's Interview HERE >>