Hiring a Criminal Defense Lawyer Attorney in Minneapolis, Minnesota

Importance of Experienced Lawyer

More In This Category

View Transcript

Well, here’s – I alluded to that earlier, but I’m glad that we can talk about it again ’cause it’s very important. There are people who are lawyers, who practice law, who do nothing but DWIs, and if they’ve never tried a criminal sexual conduct case, you may not want them to have – to try your case as their first case, although there are some lawyers who are right outta law school who do a brilliant job on their first case. It’s just that most of us would prefer that, if we’re going to trial on a case that our very life hangs in the balance, that we have somebody who’s done it before, the same as you would want somebody who’s doing the open heart surgery on your infant child to be somebody who has a lot of experience in doing this procedure successfully.

I always tell clients – I tell them about my experience, and my experience is that I was a prosecutor prosecuting many, many trials as a young lawyer, and about a dozen of them were criminal sexual conduct cases, and I always tell them, “And I won all of those but one, but don’t worry; that’s nothing to brag about because an average lawyer can win most of his cases as a prosecutor.” I then go on to tell them that I made the transition to the defense side, and I’ve tried over 20 of these cases as a defense lawyer to a verdict, most of them child molesting cases, but 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 of them that were rape cases, and I’ve won every single one of them. And I say, “Now, that’s a good indication that Kevin Short is a good lawyer to hire for your case.” It doesn’t mean I’m the only good lawyer in town, but that’s what I can tell you, and you don’t want to hire somebody that used to be a prosecutor and was one of the very best prosecutors in the world in this area, but has never really had the heart to do the defense side, doesn’t like it. You don’t want that lawyer, and you certainly don’t want a lawyer who tries DWIs and small-time drug cases but has never tried one of these things. And you certainly don’t want a lawyer who’s tried seven or eight or nine of them and never won one.

And so you – and we have many great lawyers in the state of Minnesota, but whatever your need is for a lawyer, and particularly if it’s because you’ve been falsely accused of a sex crime, you need to very carefully find out exactly how long they’ve been doing this, exactly how many cases like this they’ve tried to a jury, how those cases turned out, and what is their strategy for the facts of your case. See if it makes sense. See if you have a comfort level. What you don’t wanna do is just hire somebody – and by the way, this is difficult to do because, as I’ve said, people come to the office and they barely know what their name is. They’re so disheartened and dismayed and beside themselves that this accusation has been made, they can barely think.

So you need to get help. You need to get people who have a clear head to help you make this decision.

Minneapolis criminal defense attorney Kevin Short discusses why someone charged with a sex crime should hire a lawyer with experience in that area of the law.

More Videos From This Lawyer