Driving under the influence, the area of practice that I primarily focus in, is largely considered by most criminal law practitioners as being an uphill battle, impossible to do. And the fact is, is that it is probably one of the most difficult charges to defend against. When we look at a typical criminal case, there’s only one case going on, it’s a criminal prosecution, all the rules are very clearly laid out in front of you and they’re in the Constitution and have been honed to a very keen understanding of what the state has to do in order to prove you guilty of a criminal defense. That’s true on the driving under the influence. The criminal prosecution of a DWI case as well. But in DWI world, we also have this companion, what I refer to as the shadow prosecution going on. And that is that you also have a file a civil lawsuit against the State of Minnesota to try to get your driver’s license back. And that civil lawsuit, the whole goal of that civil lawsuit is basically to come up with something that counts the same as a criminal conviction, but is easier to come by.

So the burden of proof drops substantially. So we’ve lost our jury trial. We’re now trying a case to a judge who’s heard everything there is to hear. So we’re not dealing with jurors anymore. Instead of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, now the proof is by preponderance of the evidence. So winning in the civil arena is extremely difficult to do, but when you win it, it’s very rewarding. Winning in that civil arena, especially if that happens first, we walk out of the room with an order signed by a judge saying there’s something wrong with this case. And now we take that into the criminal arena to negotiate with a prosecutor. And the prosecutor is gonna have to look at that pretty seriously and wonder whether they can still continue on with the prosecution.

So we’re actually doing criminal defense, but we’re defending at a much lower burden for the state to prove, which makes these cases so much harder to defend against than a typical criminal case.