What questions should someone ask a Florida license suspension attorney before hiring him or her? We asked David Haenel, an attorney based on Florida’s west coast whose practice focuses on Florida suspended license issues, to comment. According to Haenel, they should ask questions such as:

• How much experience do they have in this area of the law?
• What do they think the outcome of their case is going to be?
• How are they involved in the community?

As a member of the Florida Traffic Court Rules Committee, a committee that meets several times a year to write traffic court rules, Haenel practices what he preaches. Committee members are constantly getting together and trying to brainstorm to either tweak the current rules, or make new ones, to make sure that the rules directly address the laws passed by Florida’s legislature. Haenel provided this example:

There was a change in the law dealing with license suspensions on mandatory infractions. There used to be no minimum requirement to suspend somebody’s license if they received a ticket for careless driving, for example, and the person was seriously injured. The legislature has created all these new laws which say that your license shall be suspended for a certain period of time, usually 90 days, if there’s a serious injury to another individual.

It’s clear that Florida’s ever changing license laws can be very confusing and difficult to deal with on your own.

A lawyer can walk you through the process…

As a lawyer whose practice focuses on license suspensions, Haenel says that it’s important to look at a client’s driving records and do everything he can to contact the clerk’s offices in those counties to find out what exactly it is that’s suspending them. He explained, “We walk clients through the process. Some people can’t get their license reinstated; they might be under a five year suspension or they might be under a permanent suspension whereby they would have to wait a certain number of years. Permanent suspensions can never get a license because of the current status of the law, but the habitual traffic offender would have to wait a certain number of years, usually one, before they’re eligible for even a hardship license.”

…and go to court for you

Florida’s traffic court rules also allow attorneys to step in and handle situations to ease the burden on drivers. Haenel continued, “The nice thing is that the traffic court rules allow for an attorney to appear on behalf of the client. So, if you live in Miami and you pick up a ticket in Tampa, you hire a lawyer and you don’t actually have to go to court. The lawyer can go for you. That’s huge, especially for somebody who doesn’t live in the state. Obviously, we have a lot of tourists. I’m constantly dealing with people that aren’t from the area who can’t come back to court in whatever county it is in which they received the citation.”

If your license has been suspended in Florida, contact an attorney whose practice focuses on license suspension issues. Click here, to contact a Florida criminal attorney.