WHAT’S THE STORY BEHIND THESE REVIEWS?

April 9th, 2025

I thought about what people must wonder about the reviews that they see on law firm websites like ours. Questions like: “who are these people?” “Are these reviewers compensated for their glowing words?” “How do these people find the damn time to do this?” I wonder the same thing when I look at some law firm websites and I realize that – perhaps knowing the subject lawyers – maybe this is hyperbole and not an unvarnished piece of feedback from a real-life client.

I decided to take a recent review on our website and just tell the story about the case.

Here is the review from a client who identified themselves as “M.T.”:

“There’s a very very clear difference between Mike and not Mike. Originally hired an “experienced” lawyer with a bad gut feeling who was willing to almost immediately settle for a poor outcome. Eventually followed the gut feeling and hired Mike. He dissected the case immediately and went through a step by step evaluation of the problems from the prosecution. Long story short, case dismissed. “

I remember this late fall Monday morning, getting ready to work. The client’s spouse left a voicemail for me at around 6:30. That usually tells me that one of two things is going on: either someone just got out of jail or is in jail OR someone took the weekend to discuss their choice of lawyer and wanted to invest in their future with the Nichols Law Firm.

I called the spouse back a little before 8 on my way to the office. I remember that it was going to be one of those busy Mondays; the Monday’ist of Mondays. I suggested that I should speak with the actual client. We firmed up a plan for a zoom after we were all done with the workdays. It was around 6:00 that we ended up on a zoom together. In the meantime, I took a cursory look at the driving conduct on the arresting officer’s dash camera and the client’s performance on the SFST’s.

I made no promises but did what we do: issue-spotting. Issue-spotting is one of the first things that they teach you in law school. A lot of lawyers see one issue and then hyper-focus on that one issue to the detriment of ruling out the viability of all others.

Things get interesting here – as it turns out, the lawyer who represented them, had been asking my advice and for tips throughout his phase of the representation. One of the fascinating things to me is how few lawyers take on a case in a practice area that they do not do regularly, then fail to take the advice of lawyers who could be considered “experts” in the field.

That is exactly what happened here. I remember the issue very well. I was getting questions like: “why wouldn’t we do an independent analysis of the blood? The client does not agree with the result.”

Yeah – but guess what – you’re creating evidence and no matter what – the prosecutor and the analysts from the Michigan State Police are going to caucus on a way to make your independent analysis look like it is either wrong, or that it confirms their result or otherwise makes your evidence look like their evidence. I have been handling a lot of drunk driving cases over the last 25.5 years, and I know how they roll. There is a recipe for your make-up if you are one of the people who work at the Michigan State Police. It is a 5-part recipe: 1-part forensic analyst and 4-parts professional witness for the prosecution.

I wanted to take the case because it was in a cool little county way up north that I like to hit from time-to-time if it is the right situation. Yes – I charged them a lot. You have to remember one thing: we are all human. I know that I am going to be motivated to win BUT I also have to have another motivation: keeping the lights on at the NLF and feeding our families at the NLF. So, I charge a lot most every time and I do the case on a billable arrangement. In other words, I put in the time, I charge your file. We are all only human and we all need to make sure that psychologically, we know that we have got to prioritize putting in the time when we charge as much as we do.

We should cut to the chase at this point of the story; I send out Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) every time. I get the data from the lab and I send it to an expert. I get the videos, and I send them to another expert. I am investigating, researching, and doing my best to turn issue-spotting to an attack on the case.

Then, I find a little diamond in the tons of earth that I was moving (analogy completely stolen from the Godfather of DUI, Donald Ramsell of Arizona): the officer who arrested the client was disciplined the very same month that he made this arrest. The same month. The discipline that he incurred is a suspension and the reason for the suspension is not that important – what is important is that the night of this arrest is the first night back for this cop from the suspension.

Believe me when I say this: he had a ‘tude. That was a big reason why the client wanted to fight. The client did not have prior offenses, there was no major collateral consequence like a commercial driver license on the line – the client had the money because the couple had good jobs … but this cop was a class-a jerk to both of them at the scene and hence – it is GAME ON.

Here is how we turn this “fun-fact” into a precise dagger.

I do not haul off and file motions like “dismiss the case – bad cop.”

I do not send a massive letter to the prosecutor that will find its way to the recycling tub.

I do one thing: I contemplate all the conversations between the prosecutor’s office and police agency about this cop and what to do with him.

I send a “Supplemental Discovery Demand.”

In this demand I request:

“All communications, including written or oral, email or otherwise, about the decision to discipline officer ( ) and whether to include the officer on the county’s Brady/Giglio list for officers.”
“All documentation about the assessment of the veracity (truthfulness) of officer ( ) during the internal investigation of the conduct that led to his suspension.”

The Brady/Giglio list references a list that every prosecuting agency is expected to have that includes a list of all officers who are, essentially, burned as witnesses because they are bad actors, typically because they lied. This demand is going to mine all this information, or “smoke out” whether the prosecutor actually has such a list – because remember every prosecutor’s office is supposed to have a list of bad actors with badges.

Within about a week of the supplemental discovery demand, Cindy checks with the court to verify that we can get a motion hearing on our pending motion to dismiss that we filed because the officer’s administration of the SFSTs was deficient, and the client looked just fine and sober during the SFST performance.

The response to her inquiry: “you guys won’t be zooming or appearing or anything – we just received a nolle (a dismissal request) from the prosecutor on this one.” I see the forwarded email.

That was a fun phone call with the client – case dismissed – problem solved; jerk gets his comeuppance and I have one “ask” for the client: “can I send you a couple of links so that you might be willing to do a review?” The result is what you read in our testimonial section. Love it.