Richard Jacobs (RJ): When your firm represents DUI defendants, how often are, is yourself or the attorney that work for you, able to get DUI charges reduced, for instance?

Lawrence Taylor (LT): Well, of course, every case is different and any attorney who tells you when they come in to be represented, any attorney that says, “I can get this reduced to a reckless driving,” or to whatever, walk out of the office as quickly as you can.

RJ: Okay.

LT: Because you cannot predict in advance anything before you find the evidence and see, for example, the police reports, the DMV reports, the calibration records, the maintenance records, the usage logs for the machine, the videotape. Unless you have all that information and you know a lot about your client and his background and who the prosecutor and judges are, there are so many variables that you cannot do that. Having said that, we’re very successful, obviously, and in what we do in our profession, and we’re very good at getting charges reduced. But that depends on essentially, on two things. And that is, first, discovery and investigation, you have got to put a lot of time in and find the records, the DA is not going to turn them over to you.

RJ: Right.

LT: You have to get a court order in those cases. You need to get the blood, for example, from their lab take it to your independent lab and have it reanalyzed. You need the calibration records, the maintenance records, the usage logs, as I indicated, and the videotapes, possibly from the security camera in the jail cell area.

RJ: Wow!

LT: These can be very helpful to showing whether you were, are, in fact are staggering and having difficult in your balance, speech is slurred, these kinds of things. So you better do your background. You may want to go over where the field sobriety test was administered, the videotape, the course of where the officer was following in the car.

RJ: Really?

LT: There are a lot of things that you need to do. The second part, the variable that permits you to get a good plea bargain or not, is simply your own credibility as an attorney, your own experience in the eyes of the judge and, most importantly, in the eyes of the DA. Does this DA have respect for you? If he doesn’t, if he knows you’re never going to try a case, you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re brand new, or you simply aren’t going to do the work necessary. He’s not worried about you; he knows you’re going to plead him guilty and he’s not going to deal with you. If, on the other hand, he knows you’re with the firm that is specialized and that has a reputation for going to trial when necessary and does the work and is an expert in these areas, he knows who you are. I mean, I used to be a DA, I know how that game is played.

RJ: Right.

LT: And you assess, not just the case that is the facts, you assess the attorney who you’re going to be opposing in trial, if it comes to that. And, that is most definitely a factor in your decision how to resolve that case.