Those pesky reviews. As the lawyer with the highest number of pending DWI cases in Wake County, North Carolina, I marvel at the fact that I have only two reviews. How, I wonder to myself, do all these other lawyers have so many reviews? Why, I ponder, do I seem to attract clients who don’t write reviews and other lawyers seem to attract clients who do write reviews. Who, I question, are these people writing reviews? Why (again), I wonder, are all these reviews other lawyers are receiving “good” reviews? Surely these aren’t fake reviews. Surely, my fellow members of the profession aren’t encouraging their clients to write reviews. Surely, negative reviews aren’t mysteriously disappearing. Surely, there isn’t some sort of nefariousness going on.
For my part, I don’t know or care about the hows, whys and whos of any reviews about me; I neither encourage nor discourage my clients to write reviews – that would demean both me and my profession: I’m not a hotel. I don’t mention reviews to my clients. I think reviews are terrible and can’t be trusted.
However, I will address the two negative reviews of me. The first is from a client who didn’t like the fact that I actually expected to be paid the fee I quoted. Enough said there. The second is patently unfair. This client was facing two years in prison because of prior convictions for DWI; this person also had his or her car seized and I referred the seizure issue out to another lawyer because I don’t handle the seizure issue as it often constitutes a conflict of interest; this person’s complaint concerning the seizure issue is with that lawyer, not me. This client is correct that in early 2014 I had a revolving door of paralegals; however, that did not affect in any way, the quality of my representation of him or her in securing this person the minimum sentence of probation with a 30 day active component – this case was a total loser, and it was my job to mitigate matters as much as possible, which I did.
This review-writer’s complaint that I advised him or her that we should plead guilty on the first court date is true; and this person agreed that we should do so so as to avoid an aggravating factor that, while it wouldn’t have changed the level of punishment, almost certainly would have resulted in a judge imposing something other than the minimum punishment, which is what I argued successfully to the judge to give this person. I then advised my client to appeal the sentence to Superior Court to give him or her time to complete a period of in-patient treatment, having explained to this person that every day of in-patient treatment would satisfy a day in jail. we continued the case out long enough for this person to complete his or her in-patient treatment. This person enrolled in a 28-day in-patient treatment program, two days short of the 30-day minimum active component of this person’s minimum sentence. I advised this person that, unless we could find a place where he or she could complete two more days of in-patient treatment, he or she would have to spend two days in jail to satisfy the minimum sentence. We were unable to find a facility that would accept this person for two days; and when we went back to court to remand the matter back for re-sentencing (with no guarantee that he or she would still receive the minimum and fully understanding that this person would have to spend at least two days in jail), the re-sentencing judge honored the original sentence (which he didn’t have to do), placed this person on probation and ordered this person to spend two days in jail (to satisfy the minimum sentence) on a date to be determined by him or her and his or her probation officer.
Following the re-sentencing, rather than telling my client to sit in the court room and wait for probation (which I normally do), I walked my client to the probation office, where, as the review-writer correctly stated, the intake person said to me: “Hello, we don’t normally see you in here.” The review-writer complained about this too.
As we find ourselves so often saying in my line of work: No good deed goes unpunished.
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