Questions to Ask a Military Lawyer Before Hiring

If you’re a military member, and you are accused of a crime, you may already know that your honor, as well as your career, can be at stake. Your several years of service and hard work can vanish into thin air.

Although Servicemembers Civil Relief Act provides various financial and legal protections to military members, you must ensure to contact a military lawyer without any delay to get the best possible outcome for your case.  

Your entire future depends on the attorney. Therefore, it’s essential to choose a specialist carefully, and that is only possible by asking the following questions before hiring one.

Legal Fees

Usually, the legal fees for a court-martial are charged on a flat rate basis. It means no matter how long your case takes to resolve; you are going to be charged the same rate as agreed initially.

Therefore, your potential attorney should always clearly discuss all the legal fees with you. Generally, you can expect the legal fees to be between $2,000 and $10,000, but again this ranges from attorney to attorney.

Level of Expertise

Law has a vast number of fields, and it’s not necessary that all lawyers will be experts in military law.

They may have a basic understanding, but you need to hire the one who possesses an extensive level of knowledge and experience in handling military cases, as civilian law is quite different.

You should definitely ask them about their previous clients, what kind of cases they have handled in the past and how many of them were successful and similar to yours.

Asking these questions will give you a good overview of the probable outcome of your case.

Assess Their Honesty

It’s not easy to assess their honesty, but you can definitely get a clue of their intentions by asking certain questions relating to your case. You should ask them questions like:

• What are your expectations regarding the outcome of the case?
• In case it’s not favorable, what steps will you take?
• How will you handle the entire case?
• What will be your initial plan?

Any lawyer can talk about the “good” aspects of the case only, and this can unnecessarily increase your expectations regarding the case.

Although it’s not entirely wrong, an efficient lawyer should be able to talk about the negative sides of your case as well.

You can then easily tell if they simply want to earn money from you, or they genuinely care about your case.

Frequency of Communication

Knowing all the details regarding your case throughout the procedure can make things a lot easier for you mentally. You certainly don’t want to hire a military attorney who is least concerned to update you on the details of your case.  

Therefore, before hiring a military lawyer, you must ask them how they will communicate with you through the process and how often you should expect to hear from them.

Clearing such queries in advance will save you from the trouble down the line.