Alright, 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 I certainly do my best to answer the

questions that are pouring in on the Lawyer Talk podcast web page.

To that end, I suppose I should remind everybody, if you've got a question, if

you didn't get through on the Blitz 99 seven with Loper and Randy as we answer

their questions on Wednesdays, you can always send a question to

lawyertalkpodcast.com. There's an easy question interface and maybe you'll be

lucky enough to get your question answered right here.

Now, today I'm going to do something a little bit different.

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 even a lawyer.

And this individual brought up a very interesting question and

she was asking, what do I tell somebody when they call me or when I first talked

to them after they've been pulled over for a DUI or Ovi, as we call it here in Ohio?

And she was explaining the situation where

her neighbor got an Ovi a couple of weeks ago in Ohio and was literally in tears.

She was talking to her in the yard and she didn't know what to do.

She was a little bit despondent.

And this professional asked me, how do I handle that?

What do I say?

I think it's important as lawyers to understand that we have clients.

We don't just have legal problems and we don't just follow the textbook.

I actually do have clients and clients are people and they have problems.

And 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 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 clients.

I 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, all those, as I tell people, are normal questions to ask.

And you would say, well, how is it normal?

It sounds like it's over the top.

Well, it's normal in the context that that

is what people experience when they have that anxiety, that stress of an Ovi.

The next day when they wake up, it doesn't

mean it's going to last, and it doesn't mean that it's all rational.

But these are questions that people ask themselves all the time.

When I talk to people the first time, I always tell them, look, this is normal.

It's going to be okay. This is the hardest, 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 going to happen to you.

You don't know if you're going to ruin your life.

All these things are these unknowns.

And the unknowns caused the stress.

The unknowns cause the anxiety.

And the best thing you can do to deal with that is get answers.

And typically the first step is to call a

lawyer, call anybody, call somebody that's competent, call me at 614-224-6142

that said, get some answers from a professional who can help you.

And then I can tell you, look, your life is not going to be ruined.

If an Ovi ruined everybody's life, then there'd be a lot of lives out there that

were in tatters and never to be recovered because there's so many people that get

Ovis and so many people that survive it the real issue that I think people should

consider is not what's going to happen, but what am I going to do now?

How am I going to deal with this?

I think it's very helpful to give people

the answers to their questions, but also explain to them this could be just a path

on another pavement, on the path of the road to hell.

There 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 to make sure you never do it again.

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 is coming up within three or five days?

What is going to happen with 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 any magical psychology.

I think it's pretty basic.

Moving 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 going to feel better.

And that's generally what I tell people in

my first conversation who are distraught over the Ovi.

And I mean it.

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 crazy panic button and say, screw it.

I'm just going to just ride the path all

the way down from here because my life is over anyway.

Don't make your problem worse.

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, if people just go plead guilty to Ovi, if

you just go say, 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 saved guy to test below.

00:17.

But over zero eight, I won't get into the science there.

But generally 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.

You can pay for a single occupancy room.

If you want to share a room and save some

money, you can do that in the day of Covet.

I think less people are choosing that option.

But you're going to go to a weekend seminar.

Nobody wants to spend their weekend at a hotel alcohol drinking and driving

seminar, but I've never really heard anybody say it was awful.

I've heard people complain about like

bedbugs and things like that once in a while and shame on the hotel for that.

And I've had people complain about a bad roommate.

But generally the content of the seminars, it's not so bad.

We call that an Ohio driver's intervention program.

I also tell people you're going to get a

fine and after court cost usually shakes out about $500, and you're going to lose

your license in Ohio for a period of one year.

Generally speaking, if you just go plead guilty during that year, you can typically

get driving privileges to go to and from work.

You can get privileges to drive during work is needed.

You can get privileges to drive to medical

appointments, often even activities for your children, if that applies.

And depending on the court system,

depending on the jurisdiction, the privileges can get quite broad.

And that's all good news.

And the point is that you can survive it.

You're going to be okay.

And 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, make it seem like it's the worst thing in the world.

Call our friends, tell them our life is over.

Go shut out the lights in the bedroom and

cover our face with pillows and wish that we were dead.

Well, don't do that. 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 rear view mirror.

And then the only question is what do we

need to do to make sure it never, ever happens again?

So I thought that was a really interesting question.

I thought it was helpful just to get it out there on Lawyer talk.

Q. A.

And a.

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.com or 614-224-6142 and I may rework them a

little bit to make it answerable 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, look

me up, go to lawyertalkpodcast.com and submit it.

Lots of other great things going on here at the lawyer talk podcast.

We're doing these longer roundtable sessions for those who like that sort of

thing and want to spend the time to really listen and dig in.

And I've got the legal breakdown series that I come back to here and there where I

take some of the issues of the day and break them down.

My motto is always the same.

I like to make things simple and almost everything can be made simple.

And I should also say that a lot of times, if not more often than not,

the media that's reporting on legal stuff, they just get it wrong.

They're missing some nuance that we deal

with every day and when we're practicing attorneys.

And I try to break that down and make it simple for people so they can understand

it and understand where the media is falling short on their reporting.

And too often in the politically hot bed

of a world, I hear questions and commentary that's just slanted in a way

that tends to fit the cause or the narrative that they want to promote.

And that's not always what the reality of the legal situation is.

So what I always try to do, Irrespective

of any political bent, Irrespective of any bias that I carry, I try to give people a

legitimate commentary on what is really going on behind the scenes, Particularly

in the criminal trials, the big ones that happen, I can almost always provide some

insight that the mainstream, established media is missing or screwing up, and

that's what the legal breakdown is all about.

So with that, we will end another riveting session, lawyer talk.

Q-A-I am taking legal questions off the record, but on the air at least until now.