{"id":24654,"date":"2020-02-16T17:22:08","date_gmt":"2020-02-16T17:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.freeadvice.com\/do-i-need-a-lawyer-for-a-pretrial-hearing-on-a-domestic-violence-matter\/"},"modified":"2024-10-21T04:48:54","modified_gmt":"2022-06-29T18:49:34","slug":"do-i-need-a-lawyer-for-a-pretrial-hearing-on-a-domestic-violence-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.freeadvice.com\/legal\/do-i-need-a-lawyer-for-a-pretrial-hearing-on-a-domestic-violence-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"Do I need a lawyer for a pretrial hearing on a domestic violence matter?"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;text-align: left;padding-right: 45px\"><em><strong>You should definitely consider hiring an attorney.&nbsp; You are dealing with a very serious matter and should be well armed. If funds are tight, ask your local bar association or legal aid about a pro-bono program. If you own a home, borrow against its equity.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>You should definitely have an attorney for pretrial hearing on a domestic violence matter. Indeed, if you are accused of domestic violence (or even suspect you will be accused), retain an <a href=\"https:\/\/trk.justanswer.com\/aff_c?offer_id=2&amp;aff_id=10077&amp;url_id=4\" target=\"_blank\">attorney<\/a> right away. You don&#8217;t want to face this without expert help at your side.<\/p>\n<p>It is true that you do not legally need an attorney. You are allowed to represent yourself as your own attorney or &#8220;pro se.&#8221; You could potentially start out representing yourself and then get an attorney later, in a bid to save money by reducing the amount of attorney time for which you are paying.<\/p>\n<p>But why this is a bad idea can be succinctly summarized by two old sayings: &#8220;Someone who acts as his own attorney has a fool for a client,&#8221; and &#8220;Penny wise, pound foolish.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Domestic violence is a serious charge. That&#8217;s because violence is violence. Committing violence against your significant other is legally the same as assaulting a stranger, and you can face just as much jail time as if you attacked some random passer-by on the street. Focus on the &#8220;violence&#8221; part, not the &#8220;domestic&#8221; part. Domestic violence is a crime of violence, with (depending on the exact facts) up to years in prison as a possibility. It also has consequences for divorce (if you are married), <a href=\"https:\/\/family-law.freeadvice.com\/family-law\/child_custody\/domestic-violence-factors-into-child-custody-decisions.htm\" target=\"_blank\">child custody<\/a> (if you have children), and can result in being sued for the victim&#8217;s injuries. <u>Do not underestimate<\/u> the potential consequences.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe you&#8217;re very smart. Perhaps you&#8217;ve seen every episode of <em>Law &amp; Order<\/em> there is. That still doesn&#8217;t make you an attorney. Lawyers go to school for years before they are allowed to practice. They have education, training, and experience you simply can&#8217;t match as a non-lawyer. They also have the advantage of having a perspective on the matter which you lack, since it was not their relationship or their future on the line. A lawyer can approach this matter far more objectively and dispassionately than you. Quite simply, the lawyer will do a better job than you.<\/p>\n<p>Things you say or do at the outset of a case can affect the outcome. Saying the wrong thing early on&#8211;such as at a pretrial hearing&#8211;can amount to a confession. For example;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp; 1) A lawyer can advise you as to what to say and (perhaps more importantly) not say.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp; 2) Maybe there&#8217;s a flaw in how the prosecution obtained evidence that might result in critical evidence being thrown out. But unless you know how to determine if they did something wrong&#8211; and if they did, how to challenge the evidence&#8211; it will stay in and be used against you. &nbsp;(Whereas if it is excluded early on, that will change the entire complexion of the case.)<\/p>\n<p>A lawyer can also more effectively make sure that you receive bail which you can afford, so you don&#8217;t spend your time in jail even before the case is heard. That&#8217;s why someone acting as their own attorney in a case like this has a fool for client&#8211;to act as your own attorney is to increase your odds of spending time in prison or suffering other serious consequences, and only a fool would do that.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s also why to try to save money by hiring the lawyer later is being penny wise, but pound foolish. You are saving a relative small amount of money (pennies) at the cost of damaging your case and suffering worse consequences (pounds).<\/p>\n<p>Whenever you are faced with jail time and other serious consequences, including for domestic violence, the best thing you can for yourself is to get a lawyer right away, so you can start helping yourself from the very beginning of the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You should definitely consider hiring an attorney.&nbsp; You are dealing with a very serious matter and should be well armed. If funds are tight, ask&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9569],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-domestic-violence-questions"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.freeadvice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24654"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.freeadvice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.freeadvice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freeadvice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freeadvice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24654"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.freeadvice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1366418,"href":"https:\/\/www.freeadvice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24654\/revisions\/1366418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.freeadvice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freeadvice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.freeadvice.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}