Responding to the point about what you are supposed to do if you need a lawyer and don't know any - I needed a lawyer once and didn't know any. I first read ab

Responding to the point about what you are supposed to do if you need a lawyer and don't know any - I needed a lawyer once and didn't know any. I first read about what I was accused of, I read the relevant parts of the law I was accused of violating, and then I googled and read whatever I could about the crime. I then looked up local lawyers and read their websites and bios and googled them to see if there was anything to read about them. Background research done I created a list of lawyers I wanted to talk to and called them one by one and discussed the case over the phone. The crime I was accused of was somewhat rare and none of the five lawyers I called were familiar with it. I could tell fairly quickly that several of the lawyers were, for lack of a better term, bullshitting me about their familiarity with crime because I had first done the basic research so I had some understanding of what was reasonable to say about it. One lawyer was obviously reading passages from wikipedia verbatim to me, which I recognized having recently read the same wikipedia article myself. Another lawyer didn't seem to listen to me - after hearing my story he confidently assured me he could get the charge reduced... to what I was already charged with. Others just didn't seem that competent. The lawyer I ultimately went with was a former prosecutor, which I liked because I figured it meant he would know the other prosecutors, and he was the only one who, when I called him, said "I don't know much about this. Let me do some reading and call you back." I immensely respected that more than the people who tried to pretend like they knew what they were talking about. Ultimately, we had an extremely successful result and now if anyone I know ever needs a lawyer, I have one to recommend. It may be a bit harder if you don't have connections, but there is no reason why the average person retaining a lawyer can't go through the effort of finding one they are comfortable with.