Yes, You Can Afford to Hire a Lawyer!
If you’re facing a misdemeanor charge in Virginia or any kind of serious traffic ticket, one question that may be going through your mind is whether or not hiring a lawyer is affordable. You might even question if it would be worth the money. Hiring an attorney does cost money, but I suggest that it’s too expensive to not hire one. An attorney will help navigate to the best possible outcome. And not hiring an attorney could cost you money in the long run.
No lawyer can promise the results or guarantee what’s going to happen. I wish we could. All cases have unique facts and circumstances. A good lawyer will help navigate your case and see if there are any defense options to get the best outcome that’s possible. This alone can justify the cost of hiring an attorney.
What do I mean when I say that not hiring an attorney could cost you money in the long run? Some serious traffic and misdemeanor cases affect the cost of your insurance. And if it’s a misdemeanor case, it could affect your future employment. Those are just two simple reasons why it could be financially beneficial to hire a lawyer to help keep down your insurance premium and also to help make sure that a conviction or other serious consequences don’t affect your employment now or in the future.
Another thing to consider is that you have time to hire a lawyer. You don’t have to hire someone the day you get a ticket or get arrested. In many cases, if you’re facing jail time, your first appearance in court would just be an arraignment. That day is when the judge is simply going to tell you that you’re facing jail time and you have the right to a lawyer. He’ll ask what you want to do about a lawyer, and he’ll give you a new date to come back for court with an attorney.
What I always tell people is that if you need more time than the judge gives you, if you ask right then, politely, for a little more time to get together money for a lawyer, the judge will a lot of times ask how much time you need. You might be able to get another month or two. That can be enough time in many misdemeanor cases to save the money to hire an attorney to help you with the charge.
And finally, a lot of attorneys do accept payment plans. In my office, we accept payment plans in some cases, depending on the facts of the case and the circumstances. We definitely accept all major credit cards for every case, and in fact, that’s one of our preferred methods of payment. It’s simply easier for us to accept a credit card in a case. So that way you can finance hiring the attorney to have as much time as you need to pay off the bill with the credit card company.
Accepting credit cards is an easy way to make sure you’re protected and defended in an affordable way, and you can pay it off at your leisure. I do accept all major credit cards and even payment plans in some cases.
Even though it might not be cheap, it is affordable to hire a lawyer. And in many cases it makes sound financial sense.
