The original Driving Lawyers
When we started defending driving matters, there was no such thing as a “driving lawyer,” at least in British Columbia. In fact, it was very rare to see a lawyer in traffic court.
The two partners who founded our organization started as criminal defence lawyers working in law offices where they dealt with a lot of impaired driving cases. It was common for clients to call needing help with traffic matters. Callers would often complain that the lawyers they knew were reluctant to take traffic court cases. That was, in fact, often the case. Very few lawyers would ever set foot in traffic court and so they were not familiar with the processes.
Prior to 2000, it was rare to see a lawyer in traffic court. If they were there, it was usually for their own ticket or for a friend. At the time there was no law firm that held itself out as defending driving and traffic court cases and nobody seemed to want to gain the experience needed to become really skilled at traffic court work. Police officers would report that they almost never dealt with lawyers.
The lawyers who started BC Driving Lawyers enjoyed traffic court work and recognized that they were usually the only lawyers who attended traffic court on a regular basis.
When the BC Government upped the punishment for several offences in 2010, the demand for their services was nearly overwhelming. It became clear that to properly defend clients in traffic court, it was necessary to buckle down and build an organization with traffic ticket defence as the central premise.
That was when BC Driving Lawyers was launched, and the idea of driving lawyers became a reality. The founding members hired retired police officers to train them in enforcement methods. They got their hands on police training material, radar and laser speed guns, internal police documents and the manufacturers’ manuals are particular to BC to be able to properly confront the evidence of the traffic officers in court.
And then we started to train more lawyers. The idea was to flesh out defences and to develop the law by being the best driving lawyers we possibly could be. By representing as many clients as we are able, we became quick, efficient, and good at our work. As we refined our skills, we were able to lower our fees. As we lowered our fees, more drivers were able to afford us, and we got better and better at handling these cases.
We invented the idea of being a driving lawyer. Now, if you attend traffic court, you may find 2-3 lawyers from our organization, police officers who are accustomed to dealing with lawyers and even sometimes lawyers from law firms that are trying their hand in traffic court.
If you’re a driver in British Columbia, it’s important to have a driving lawyer on your side when you have a legal issue on the road.
Got caught? Call us. We’re the original BC Driving Lawyers. We don’t take family law cases. We don’t write wills. We defend drivers just like you who have traffic tickets, driving prohibitions or DUI cases.