Facing Criminal Charges? How a Bit of ‘Preventive Law’ Could Have Helped You

You’ve heard of preventive medicine. In general, preventive medicine is the idea that you can take steps to manage or even prevent injury and illness by proactively taking care of your health through diet, exercise, etc.

Have you heard of preventive law?

As a concept, preventive law has been around for a while, but it’s not nearly as commonplace as preventive medicine. With preventive law, you try to find ways to stop potential legal problems from becoming worse. In the best of circumstances, preventive law might even stop a legal problem from happening in the first place.

Take criminal charges, as one example.

If only you had known about preventive law and taken advantage of it ahead of time. It’s quite possible that (1) you already would have known who to call when you got in trouble and (2) you may have prevented the situation from getting worse than it already is.

Three Factors to Consider in Preventive Law
Kelly Wallace for CNN writes that parents of teens should have a criminal defense lawyer on speed dial. It’s not a bad idea. So what should you do?

Here are three factors to consider:

Who You Are
How You Make Your Living
The Problems You Are Most Likely to Face
Consider Who You Are: Parent, Student, Coworker, Business Owner
You could be all of these. The point is that knowing who you are will point you down the right path in terms of finding the lawyer whose advice and guidance you need.

CNN’s Kelly Wallace quotes the author of On Your Case: A Compassionate (and Only Slightly Bossy) Legal Guide for Every Stage of a Woman’s Life. “I have now two young adults,” author Lisa Green said, “and when they were going through their teenage years, it was a simple matter of a party that went wrong, a group of kids in the park when the police stop by and have some questions, bringing something to school they shouldn’t have.”

Here’s the key take-away:

“[A] little bit of knowledge of the law, a little bit of knowledge of what their rights are, the right way to behave, would have saved parents a heck of a lot of grief.”

For a parent, the motto here is that criminal charges do happen to kids. Parents should be prepared.

What You Do for a Living
The seminal example is that of a truck driver. Truck drivers depend on their commercial driver’s licenses for their livelihood. All it takes is a few mistakes – or one major one, like a fatal alcohol-related wreck – to put your CDL in jeopardy.

The same goes in every other profession: A mortgage broker who, knowingly or unknowingly, pushes boundaries in making the sale. A young teacher tempted by the prospect of entering into a sexual relationship with a current or former student.

It would help to know who to call after you’ve been accused of crossing the line.

The Problems You’re Most Likely to Face: You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know
This last point ties into the first two. But it is also the most difficult. You may have an idea as to how to approach preventive law if you know who you are in life and what types of mistakes you could make based on what you do for a living.

But you don’t know what you don’t know, which is probably the best argument for preventive law – for getting advice and counsel from a lawyer ahead of time – that there is.

Call Marcilliat & Mills PLLC
If you or a loved one is facing an investigation from state or federal authorities, or you’ve been formally charged with a crime, call today at 877-204-5365. Based in Raleigh and Charlotte, North Carolina, Marcilliat & Mills PLLC represents clients throughout the state and in select federal cases nationwide.