hire a lawyer for your teenage trouble maker

The single most important person to contact if you have been arrested and charged with a crime is a criminal lawyer, mostly because he or she can provide a number of helpful services. Listed below are just a few of the many ways in which a criminal lawyer can help.

Negotiating And Explaining Plea Bargains

One of the biggest ways that an attorney can assist you is by helping you deal with any plea bargains that you may receive. A plea bargain is often offered by a prosecutor in an attempt to rapidly resolve the case, usually by offering a lower sentence for pleading guilty to the current charges or a lesser charge. The problem with this is that there can be some hidden pitfalls that you may not be aware of. 

For example, pleading guilty to a DUI or drug charge can actually affect your life for quite some time. Pleading guilty to those charges can lead to difficulty finding a job, applying for student loans, finding decent auto insurance rates, or even being promoted at your current or future jobs. An attorney can explain these penalties to you and attempt to negotiate for a plea bargain that does not have such an impact on your future before you consider accepting the deal.

Negotiating Lesser Sentences

Another way that a criminal attorney can help you is by speaking with the judge on your behalf in order to have your sentence reduced. For example, if this is a first-time offense, the attorney can attempt to have prison time consist of any time that you have already served or have your overall prison time reduced. Depending on the charges against you, your attorney can also request that prison is avoided altogether and have you perform community service instead. 

Suppressing Damaging Information

Finally, a criminal defense attorney can help you out by requesting that any information that you may have given the police when you were arrested be suppressed. One of the reasons for this is that you may have offered information that could be very damaging to your case before you hired an attorney or had an attorney present. In that situation, having that information deemed inadmissible by a judge can prevent that information from reaching the jury, which can greatly strengthen your lawyer's defense strategy.

Contact a criminal defense lawyer today in order to discuss the many ways in which he or she can help you strengthen your case and assist you throughout the process. A criminal defense attorney can help suppress damaging information while also attempting to negotiate better plea bargains or lesser sentences. If you're interested, click the following link to learn more about this topic.