Welcome to the Criminal Law Guy VLOG.
In this first part of Choosing a Criminal Lawyer in Perth series, we go through some of the factors that we believe are important when selecting a law firm to represent you.
Welcome to Criminal Lawyers Perth. My name’s Marc Saupin, and I’m the practice director of this firm. This a series of vlogs that I hope to produce over the next foreseeable future are pretty raw. They’re not highly professionally polished. Certainly the people behind the camera and the equipment is, but I’m not. What I plan to do is just speak in hopefully everyday terms that everyday people who are non-criminals understand. And what I want to do is cover a number of topics today speaking specifically about choosing a lawyer. How do you go about choosing a criminal lawyer in Perth? And then moving on through the whole criminal justice, criminal procedure act, criminal code, right through from, say, the time you’re arrested or the time a police officer wants to speak to you right through to a trial perhaps or a plea of guilty or just continuation of proceeding.
So there’s a lot to pick up, there’s a lot to learn, and there’s a lot to get through. So hopefully I’ll be able to do it in a user friendly way keeping the jargon out of it and use words that even I understand. So today the topic I want to talk about is how do you go about choosing a criminal lawyer? Now what I’m about to say is my views, and it’s the way I run the practice, and it’s also the way that I present on the telephone to any potential clients or people just seeking general information. Everything I say is not locked in stone. It’s entirely a matter for you because ultimately you’re the person that’s going to require the assistance of a lawyer at some stage. And as I say, the relationship between a lawyer and the client is one of the most important relationships. And we’ll talk about that later, perhaps in other vlogs as to why that relationship is important.
But certainly with my experience in the criminal law jurisdiction, clients come to us because they have to. It’s not a wish. It’s not a want. It’s a need. And the clients come to us under very, very trying conditions. And lawyers have to be sensitive to that, incredibly sensitive to what’s going on in that person’s life at this moment in time. And invariably, there are going to be police involved. They could be state police. They could be federal police. Or they could be some other authority such as Corruption Crime Commission or the Australian Securities Investment Commission who will want to speak to the person about a certain wrongdoing or some unlawful act, or some unlawful allegation, I should say, and eventually get the police involved.
So when people phone us, we know and we’re alive to the fact that they are under considerable stress. And that shapes how a practitioner should deal with that person on the phone and perhaps later face to face. So today I’m going to talk about how do you go about choosing a criminal lawyer in Perth? Again, it’s my view, and it’s the way I present the firm, and it’s the way my lawyers present the firm.
