Can a lawyer beat your traffic
ticket? |
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"The state gets theirs, the city gets theirs,
but it's not a conviction," Eutsler says. "The exception
is federal law now overrides that to where commercial drivers are
not permitted to get probation. That makes our service even more
valuable for commercial drivers. It forces more trials and harder
work on our part."
Are prosecutors more likely to
dismiss charges when a traffic lawyer represents you?
"Yes, they take advantage
of people who aren't represented typically. They can get higher
fines, more convictions," says Eutsler. "For instance,
they'll offer you the minimum fine on this (driving without) insurance
case if you just plead guilty, and you don't even know there are
other options so you plead guilty and you get hit with the $750
surcharge later on from the state that has nothing to do with the
municipal court. But the prosecutor has no duty to tell you."
But Justin McNaull, a spokesman
for AAA and a former cop himself, questions whether the presence
of a lawyer necessarily results in reduced or dismissed findings.
"Lawyers were useful in helping
facilitate the case at the time, but I can't say with certainty
how much of a difference it made for the defendants. From a police
officer's standpoint, there were many cases when people hired a
lawyer and they got the same standard first-offender agreement that
they would have gotten if they'd come in without a lawyer,"
he says.
Eutsler wouldn't reveal how many
cases he represents per day, but says being a high-volume traffic
lawyer is more lucrative than it may appear.
"There are other benefits
besides doing this guy's ticket on one day. For many people, especially
in Houston, this is the only lawyer they know or have ever come
in contact with, so when they have other problems or their sister
gets in a car wreck or gets a DWI, you get a lot of other kinds
of business. In some ways, it's a loss leader for firms that do
other things besides just traffic tickets," says Eutsler.
But Frank says that offering legal
representation starting at $59 has been so successful in recent
years that he and his two associate attorneys have actually confined
their practice exclusively to traffic violations.
"It's time-consuming to handle
DUIs (driving under the influence) so I don't deal with those anymore.
I used to, but I have enough in the ticket business that I don't
have to bother with it. The more population grows, the more people
drive, the more tickets there are and the more my business grows."
Jay MacDonald is a contributing
editor based in Mississippi.
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