Eutsler boasts a 95-percent success rate at keeping traffic violations off his clients' driving records, whether they're guilty or not. The key, he says, is a savvy staff that screens his cases and knows where his time is best spent.

Like most traffic attorneys, Eutsler has no interest whatsoever in whether you're innocent or guilty. For a ticket attorney, it is far more important to know who ticketed you and where. That determines the court in which your case will be called.

His best chance for success is in the overcrowded City of Houston Municipal Court; his worst in the tiny justice of the peace courts that dot the Houston suburbs.

"In the smaller jurisdictions, most of their officers appear when you set a case for trial. In some of these little towns, we won't even practice because we know we can't do much to help," he says. "In the City of Houston, it is much more likely that the case will be dismissed or the officer won't show up."

Frank agrees: "Different counties are different; some counties, mistakes don't matter to them -- if you've got a ticket, you've got to deal with it."

Eutsler figures that 95 percent of those ticketed for speeding are guilty. He doesn't spend a lot of time arguing otherwise. Instead, as a day-to-day participant for the defense, he works with the judge and prosecutor in a friendly adversarial manner to determine which few cases will go on to a costly jury trial and which won't. Remember, jurisdictions want to make money, not spend it.

"You have a constitutional right to trial by jury here in Texas which creates pressure on the system to settle those cases, because if 100 people ask for a jury trial and they're all set for 8 o'clock on one day, there's no way, it can't happen. So there's a homeostasis, an equilibrium that gets reached just due to the volume."

Traffic lawyers know the players, the economic directives, the ever-changing laws and the processes by which cases get resolved in their local traffic courts. A case may be dismissed outright if the issuing officer doesn't show up as complaining witness. Or it may be bargained into dismissal in exchange for pleas on other nonmoving violations. Or they may be dismissed after an unsupervised probationary period, but you'll have to pay all or part of the fine.

The point is, even if you end up paying the fine, your case won't be recorded, which would set off that domino effect you've been dreading.