A lot of clients who are facing criminal charges or traffic tickets, contact us asking whether or not they need a lawyer to appear in court for them. There is no hard and fast rule about whether you need a lawyer to appear in court for you. However, it is often advisable to have one appear for you for a number of reasons.
Ultimately, the decision about whether you hire a lawyer to appear in court on your behalf is up to you.
One of the main reasons that it’s helpful to have a lawyer appear in court for you is that many times this can absolve you of your responsibility to come to court. A lawyer can appear in a capacity that is known as agent, meaning that your lawyer stands in court in your place.
Lawyers are in court all the time, it’s a part of their jobs, and so appearing in court on your behalf is not an inconvenience to us, but it may be to you.
Having to appear in court could result in you having to take time off work, take time away from school or time away from your family obligations.
Court lists are often lengthy, with sometimes over a hundred matters in the same room, which results in a quick court appearance that should only take a couple of minutes, potentially lasting several hours waiting for your matter to be called.
The court system prioritizes lawyers appearing in court, meaning that your lawyer can appear in court in a much faster way than you could if you were to appear without a lawyer.
Other benefits to having a lawyer
If identity is a major concern in your case, as the determination of you being the person who committed an offence, or you need to be recognized by somebody, those witnesses may attend court to get a look at you and be able to confirm that you’re the same person that committed the offence.
By having a lawyer appear in court for you, you protect yourself from being spotted or recognized during your interim appearances before trial. This also applies to being spotted or recognized by friends and family members or people in your community.
While your name could certainly be recognizable, it could also be somebody else’s name. There are lots of people out there with similar names, and having a lawyer appear in court for you protects your anonymity when facing a public charge.
In high-profile cases, it can also protect you from media scrutiny. If you do not attend the courthouse, you wouldn’t be pictured on the steps of the courthouse, and are not likely to be interviewed by reporters.
Remember that you never know what cases may attract media attention, and avoiding the potential that you have contact with media in a courtroom allows you to protect your reputation and keep your case, to a greater extent, out of the public eye.
The unconscious bias problem
Having a lawyer appear in court for you can also help protect you from unconscious bias.
Everybody suffers from the problem of unconscious bias, where we make assumptions about people the second, we meet and interact with them.
We prefer to appear in court for our clients as often as possible to protect them from having negative stereotypes drawn about them, even consciously, by witnesses, prosecutors and police officers.
While it’s very rare to see circumstances where there are conscious biases against an induvial, unconscious bias is difficult to avoid and having a lawyer appear in court for you is the greatest way to protect yourself from unconscious bias affecting your case.
So, while you do not need a lawyer to appear for you, and you certainly have the right to attend court, our view is always that if you’re facing a criminal charge or a traffic ticket, unless you are providing testimony or the matter is scheduled for a criminal trial, it is best to have a lawyer appear in court for you