If you are like most of my clients, the first time you ever set foot in a courtroom is to take care of your current case. You’ve never been in trouble before. Never had to worry about going to jail. And never had to worry about hiring a Seattle criminal attorney. Until now.

And now you have this thing coming up called the pretrial hearing, and you have no idea what is going on. Well, if you are reading this article, then you are in luck, because I’m about to describe to you everything you need to know about the pretrial hearing.

For the most part, the pretrial hearing is a procedural matter. Though you have to go to court and face the judge, you won’t have to do any talking, or do much of anything at all, and you have no chance whatsoever of being thrown in jail or any other worst case scenario you can conger up in your mind. The pretrial hearing, like it sounds, is a hearing to discuss trial possibilities with the judge.

Typically one of two things happens at the pretrial hearing: either a plea agreement is reached or the case is set for a motions hearing and trial date. This is a critical stage in the process because it lets the judge know if the case can be resolved between us and the prosecutor or if we are going to need to move on to the next stage.

If you have a good Seattle criminal attorney, they should be able to explain all of this to you. They will let you know what the prosecutor is offering (they are always offering something) and they will discuss with you whether or not you should take the offer (keeping in mind the strength or weakness of your case. Depending on what you decide, the pretrial hearing is either the culmination of your case (a plea agreement is reached) or the beginning (you start heading down the road to trial).

Interested in more information like this? Check out the Seattle Criminal Attorney Blog. You’ll learn how real criminal lawyers do business.