Steve Palmer: All right, here we are. Another Lawyer Talk Q and A. Churning out the Answers to all the questions on a daily basis. Well, maybe not quite a daily basis, but, uh, I certainly do my best to answer the questions that are pouring in on the Lawyer Talk podcast webpage. It is a question. It is a question I legitimately received. I'm not making it up. But I was talking to somebody yesterday who is not a client, who is another professional, not, uh, even a lawyer. And, uh, this individual brought up a very interesting question, andand she was asking, what do I tell somebody, uh, when they call me or when I first talk to them after they've been pulled over for a dui, or ovi, as we call it here in Ohio? And she was explaining this situation where her neighbor got, uh, agot an OVI a couple weeks ago in Ohio, and, uh, was literally in tears. She was talking to her in thein the yard, and, uh, she didn't know what to do. She was a little bit despondent. And she wasthis professional, asked me, you know, how do I handle that? What do I say? You know, I think it's important as lawyers to, uh, understand that we have clients. We don't just have legal, uh, problems, and we don't just follow the textbook. I actually do have clients, and clients are people, and, uh, they have problems. Uh, usually what I say is something along the lines of this. Take a deep breath. It's going to be okay. You're not alone. You're not the only one who has gone through this, and I totally understand. It's your first Time dealing, uh, with a problem like this, but it's not ours, it's not mine. I've done it many, many times. I've helped hundreds of cl. I, uh, think it's also important to tell people, look, it won't be long before this is in your rear view mirror. People survive this all the Time. It's going to be okay. Now, this is hard for people to digest as they're thinking to themselves, holy crap, what am I going to tell my wife? What am I going to tell my husband? What am I going to tell my kids? What am I going to tell my job? I'm going to lose everything. I'm an alcoholic. I'm throwing all the alcohol away in my refrigerator. I'm never drinking again. I'm a horrible, awful person. What have I done to myself? What have I done to my life? Well, you know, all those, uh, as I tell people are normal, uh, questions to ask. And, you know, you would Say, well, how is it normal? It sounds sort ofit. Uh, uh, sounds like it's over the top. Well, it's normal in the context that that is what people, uh, experience when they have that anxiety, that stress of an OVI the next day when they wake up. Uh, it doesn't mean it's going to last, and it doesn't mean that it's all rational. But these are questions thatthat, uh, people ask themselves all the Time. And when I talk to people the first Time, I always tell them, look, this is normal. It's going to be ok. This is the hardest, uh, most stressful time in the case, believe it or not, because you don't know what to do. You don't know the Answers to the questions that are swirling around your brain. You don't know what's gonna happen to you. You don't know if you're gonna ruin your life. All these things are these unknowns. And the unknowns cause the stress. The unknowns cause the anxiety. And the best thing you can do to deal, uh, with that is get Answers. And typically the first step is to call a lawyer, call anybody, call somebody that's competent. Um, call me at 614-224-6142. Um, that said, get, uh, some answers from a professional who can help you. And then I can tell you, look, uh, your life is not going to be ruined. If an OVI ruined everybody's life, uh, then there'd be a lot of lives out there that, uh, were in tatters and never to be recovered because there's so many people that get ovis and so many people that survive it. Um, the real question or the real issue that I think people should consider is not what's going to happen, but what am I going to do now? You know, how am I going to deal with this? And I think, uh, it's very helpful to give people the Answers to their questions, but also explain to them, um, this could be just a path on another paver on the path of the road to hell. Or, uh, it could be a time when you turn it around, when you say, I'm going to make some changes. I'm never doing this again, and put some plans in place, uh, to make sure you never do it again. Um, and once I start giving people some Answers, like what's going to happen with their driver's license suspension? What's going to happen with their car that's in the city impound lot? What's going to happen at court that's going to, that uh, is coming up within, uh, three or five days. What is going to happen with, uh, the case once it's over? And usually when I get through that first conversation, people start to feel better. And I think this is not, uh, any, uh, magical psychology. I think it's pretty basic, you know, moving, uh, forward, taking steps forward and solving problems incrementally. One step at a Time is the tonic for that anxiety. Fill the blanks of the unknown and you're gonna feel better. Uh, and that's generally what I tell people in my first conversation who are distraught over the ovi And I mean it. Uh, if you're out there and you've got an OVI and it's the first time and you're dealing with it, trust me, it's going to be okay. What you don't want to do is make your problem worse. You don't want to hit the, hit the crazy panic button and say, screw it. I'm just going to, I'm going to just, ah, ride the path all the way down from here because my life is over anyway. Don't make your problem worse. Um, you can make your problem better. And you do that and you start doing that by solving the incremental issues that you're facing. First and foremost, get a lawyer. Now, I should probably add that in Ohio, um, if people just go plead guilty to ovi, if you just go, say, the heck I'm going to plead guilty, courts have to do mandatory things. They have to give you a certain mandatory minimum punishment. And generally in Ohio, on a first offense generic, that is a regular. Say you've got a test below, uh, 17, uh, but over.08. I won't get into the science there. But generally, uh, what that means is you're going to do three days in a weekend program, you're going to go to a program at a hotel and you're going to be educated about all the horrible consequences and woes of drinking and driving and alcohol generally. And you're going to survive it. Um, you can pay for a single occupancy room. If you want to share a room and save some money, you can do that. Um, but you're going to go to a weekend seminar. Nobody wants to spend their weekend, uh, at a hotel. Alcohol, drinking and driving seminar. But I've never really heard anybody say it was once in a while. And you know, shame on the hotel for that. And I've had people complain about a bad roommate. But you know, generally the content of the seminars, uh, it's not so bad. We call that in Ohio, Drivers Intervention Program. I also tell people, you know, you're going to get a fine, and after court cost, it usually shakes out about 500 bucks, uh, and you're going to lose your license in Ohio for a period of one year. Generally speaking, if you just go plead guilty, uh, during that year, uh, you can typically get driving privileges to go to and from work. You can get privileges to drive during work as needed. You can get privileges to drive to medical appointments, often even activities, uh, for your children, if that applies. Uh, and, you know, depending on the court system, depending on the jurisdiction, the privileges can get quite broad. And, uh, that's all good news. And the point is that you can survive it. You're going to be okay. And, uh, you know, it won't be as horrible as you make it out to be in that first morning after or the moment after you got the ovi. And I suppose that is like lots of other problems we encounter, we tend to blow them up in our minds, make them horrible, uh, make it seem like it's the worst thing in the world. Call our friends, tell them our life is over, uh, go shut out the lights in the bedroom and cover our face with pillows, andand, uh, wish that we were dead. Well, don't do that. Uh, here's the thing. You're going to survive it. You're going to be okay, and it won't be long. As I said before that the whole thing is in your rearview mirror. And then the only question is, what do we need to do to make sure it never, ever happens again? So that was, uh, I thought that was a really interesting question. I thought it was helpful just to, uh, get it out there, uh, on the Lawyer Talk Q and A. And as I said, it didn't come in through the normal channels, but I didn't promise that. I only answer questions that come in through the normal channels. Sometimes I get questions upstairs at the law firm@ohiolegaldefense, uh.com or 614-224-6142 and I may rework them a little bit to, uh, make it answerable, uh, down here in the studio. But this one was a legit question. I did not change it at all. I answered it. And if you've got your own question, uh, look me up, go to LawyerTalkPodcast.com and submit it. Uh, with that, we will end another riveting session of Lawyer Talk Q and A, where I am taking legal questions off The Record, but on the air, at least until now.