Contact an attorney immediately. A competent attorney may provide invaluable guidance that helps prevent you from incriminating yourself, while staying within the bounds of the law. In limited cases, this advice can help prevent charges from ever being brought.

If you are picked up and held for questioning or charged with a crime, tell the police that you wish to remain silent and you do not wish to answer any questions without an attorney present. It is even more imperative that you not discuss the circumstances of the crime with police before you have seen an attorney. This, at times, may be difficult. The police can legally leave you sitting for hours in a cold room after you have refused to talk. Or they might make promises of leniency if you will only open up. It is in your best interest, however, not to start talking. The state has to prove you guilty of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. Once you start talking, you may unwittingly remove any doubts about your guilt and severely limit the options your attorney has in defending you. And as to the promises of leniency, the police do not always have the final control over how you are charged or sentenced.

Contact an attorney immediately. An attorney can visit your loved one in the police station, advise them not to talk to police and notify the police that they are represented by an attorney and will not answer questions. Timely intervention can help prevent your loved one from caving into police pressure and providing the evidence needed for a conviction.

In Illinois, if your loved one has been picked up for a relatively minor offense and has a clean record, they may be eligible for an I-Bond. That means they can leave the police station on their personal promise that they will appear in Court.

If the situation is more serious, your loved one may be held over for a bond hearing until the earliest possible court business date. At the hearing, a judge will decide how much money a criminal defendant must post in order to be released from police custody. If your loved one had the bad fortune to be picked up on a Friday night, they may have to spend the weekend in jail.

An attorney can also play an important role at the bond hearing.  At the hearing, the State will likely argue that a high bond should be set. Your loved one will have to post 10% of any bond that the judge sets in order to be released. The bond may be set so high that your loved one has no hope of making it and must then remain in jail. An experienced attorney may be able to assess which arguments are most likely to sway a particular judge to lower the bond.

Law enforcement officers are trained to make suspects feel comfortable so that they will incriminate themselves. You have the absolute right NOT to talk to the police.

In many cases, people who have tried to talk their way out of a potential arrest incriminate themselves severely. If the police ask you to answer questions about your possible role in a criminal act, you should say “I wish to exercise my right to remain silent. I wish to speak to an attorney.” In all cases, you should treat the police with respect and courtesy, even if you feel that officers are not extending the same courtesies to you. Nevertheless, you should insist on speaking to an attorney before answering questions from law enforcement officials..

If you are being charged with some form of academic dishonesty or other discipline code violation, you should discuss your legal options with an attorney. An attorney can help you through the disciplinary proceeding. Often clients are not aware of how they come across to others. An attorney can help you present yourself in the best possible light.

If believe you are being investigated for a crime, you should contact an attorney immediately. At times, the involvement of an attorney early on can reduce the chances of criminal charges being brought against you later.

Often on first offenses, a court will sentence defendants to a term of supervision or probation for a set length of time. This term may have certain conditions such as random drug testing. Probation or supervision, however, always require that you stay out of trouble with the law. Therefore, even if you are suspected of committing a crime or if you have committed a relatively minor offense such as a retail theft, the court can now re-sentence you on the first offense, which can mean significantly stiffer fines or even a jail term. And that still doesn’t take care of your new arrest.

What can you do? An experienced attorney can help you navigate between your violated case and new cases. Sometimes, an attorney will attempt to delay completing the violation case until the new charges can be resolved. If the attorney can get the new charges dismissed, you might receive a substantially reduced penalty in the prior case or the violation on the prior case might even be dropped. Even if the evidence on the new case is overwhelming, an experienced attorney may be able to help obtain a better deal for you in both cases.

To prove possession of a controlled substance, the state must show: 1) you knew about the presence of the drugs, and 2) the drugs were in your immediate and exclusive control. The police do not have to show you had the drugs on your person. Constructive possession is enough. For example, the drugs are in your closet and no one else has the keys to your home.

Since actual knowledge is difficult to prove, the state can infer that you knew about the narcotics from your acts, declarations or conduct.

While the state must show the drugs were in your immediate and exclusive control, the fact that others had access to your drugs may not be enough to get an acquittal. Possession may be held jointly. The police may charge you even if you really didn’t know about the drugs.

If you are charged with a narcotics offense, you should contact an attorney immediately. If you are placed under arrest, do not talk to the police and instead ask to speak with an attorney. An experienced attorney can determine whether the police violated your Fourth Amendment rights when they arrested you. An attorney can also guide you toward the best defense if your case should go to trial.

After your arrest, you will have a bond hearing. At the bond hearing, the court will set the amount of bail necessary to permit your release from jail. In all likelihood, the State will argue for the Court to set the highest bond possible, or in some cases, to deny bond altogether. An experienced attorney can help present those factors most likely to persuade a particular judge to set a reasonable bail.

About a month after the bond hearing, your case will be set for a preliminary hearing, that is a hearing to establish whether the police had probable cause to charge you with a felony. An experienced attorney can help by asking the right questions to create doubt about whether the police had a valid reason to stop you. A successful preliminary hearing can result in the charges being dismissed.

At the next court date, you will be brought for arraignment, where you enter a plea of guilty or not guilty.  If you plead guilty, you will automatically give up many of your rights, such as the right to test the evidence against you. Your case may then be over, but you may end up with a stiffer penalty than if you fight the charges. If you enter a not guilty plea, the process of discovery begins. Your attorney will ask to see any evidence against you. After assessing this evidence, the attorney may negotiate a plea agreement or take your case to trial.

In Illinois, a felony can range from a Class 1 to a Class 4. In addition, Class X felonies are reserved for particularly severe offenses such as murder and sexual assault on a child. Penalties for a first offense in many cases may still result in probation, but some felonies carry mandatory minimum prison terms. If convicted, a Class X felony calls for a mandatory minimum term of 6 years.

In Illinois, if you are involved in a motor vehicle accident resulting in personal injury or death, you must immediately stop at the scene of the accident and remain there until you have provided your name, address and registration to the person you struck.  Furthermore, you must provide reasonable assistance to the injured, including, if necessary, carrying them to a doctor. You also must file a police report within one half hour of the accident or of being released from a hospital.

If you have only damaged the other person’s car, you must still immediately stop and provide your information to the other driver.

In accidents involving injury or death, a failure to stop can result in a Class 4 felony, punishable by one to three years in prison. If you fail to file a police report, you may be charged with a Class 2 felony, punishable by 3 to 7 years. If the other party died, you are now subject to a Class 1 felony, punishable by 4 to 15 years. When the accident only involves property damage, you may still be charged with a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in jail plus a fine.

If you are charged with such a crime, contact an attorney immediately and do not speak to anyone, especially the police, about your situation. What you think of as a reasonable explanation may be the evidence the state needs to convict you. As with most crimes, the state must prove you guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. An experienced attorney can look for holes in the state’s case. Even if the evidence is overwhelming, an attorney who is respected in the courthouse can often negotiate a better plea agreement then you might on your own.

In Illinois, you may be guilty of a deceptive practice if you issue a check exceeding $150.00 in payment for credit, property, labor or services, knowing that you have insufficient funds, and if you failed to make the check good within seven days of receiving actual notice that your check has bounced. You are presumed to have the necessary intent to defraud if your check bounces two times at least seven days apart, or if you didn’t have enough funds to cover your check when the check was delivered. When you are hit with a Class A Misdemeanor, you face a maximum of one year in jail and a $1,000 fine. A Class 4 Felony is punishable by 1 to 3 years in state prison and a larger fine. Plus, the person who received the check can still sue you in civil court.

What can you do? Once at court, an experienced attorney can help you weigh your options. Under some circumstances, you may be able to prove that you lacked the intent required under the statute. Maybe someone bounced a check to you putting your own account in the hole.

But what if you really knew your checks would bounce? An attorney can still help you negotiate a plea agreement. In some cases, a number of individual counts may be dismissed in exchange for a guilty plea to one of the charges. In any event, the state must prove you guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and an attorney can help assess whether the state has enough evidence to do so.