Lots of lawyers take payment plans. 
In any event, you get arrested for DUI, usually because you were in a fight with your significant other, had a bad day at work, or recently got some other type of bad news in your life. Then, to add insult to injury, you get arrested and now you need to come up with a large bunch of money that you don’t have in order to hire a decent lawyer. What to do? Throw yourself on the mercy of the court?..Never. Hire some hack for $995 who looks like he just slept in his only suit? Never. Call a real lawyer and discuss your options.
So here is the question: Do good DUI lawyers take payment plans? The answer, like so many in my business, is: “It depends”.
Once we go to court for a misdemeanor, we have about 90 days until the judges start getting itchy about the age of the cases. This means we have three months to spread out the remaining payments. Thus, if the fee for a DUI case is $3,500, the attorney could accept $1,500 as a down payment and the remaining $2,000 over the next 90 days or a little over $500 per month. In many states, the first court date is not for two months. That gives us a lot of time to work out a payment plan.
But some lawyers say they won’t take payments? True, some lawyers do say that they won’t take payments. Some lawyers lie and some lawyers may be too busy or too set in their ways to work with potential clients. I say that maybe those are not the lawyers for you. Look back at my past blog articles and you will see some very consistent advice: Meet with the lawyer you are thinking of hiring – not his assistant, sales rep, paralegal or otherwise; Make sure the lawyer you are thinking of hiring practices criminal and DUI defense every day and is familiar with the you particular courthouse; and finally, make sure you feel comfortable with the lawyer. This includes the fee arrangements.
Some lawyers try to intimidate you or embarrass you or otherwise make you feel inferior when they are sitting in the lawyer’s office. If a lawyer uses a line like: “You don’t have enough money to hire me”, or “How much do you have to pay me?”, you might be in the wrong place, talking to the wrong lawyer. Every lawyer should have an idea of the fee he or she is looking to get on a particular case. It’s true that fees vary from lawyer to lawyer, but legal fees shouldn’t vary from client to client based upon the client’s ability to pay the fee.
For a confidential consultation with competent DUI and criminal defense attorney call Alex Truluck. Alexander Truluck focuses his practice as a criminal defense attorney in Clearwater, Palm Harbor, Largo, Dunedin and the Tampa Bay area.
For more information, visit our website at http://www.criminallawyerclearwaterflorida.com
or call (727) 799-3550.