Criminal Lawyer
We obviously hope you will never find yourself in the position that you would need to enlist the services of a criminal lawyer. If you do need assistance with a criminal case it is important to have a lawyer on your side who knows all the applicable procedures very well. An experienced lawyer can give you sufficient assistance and make sure you are not convicted of something you have not actually done.
It is true that every lawyer in Malta can be a criminal lawyer since there is no separate course to master this aspect of the Maltese law. All the parts of the Maltese law are taught to the students throughout the law course and there is no option for specialisation in this particular aspect or to specialise in another aspect and pass on this section. This is not a matter of the criminal law not being important enough to have it’s own course for specialisation in the subject. The criminal code has so many connections to every other part of the law and every day life that it is not possible to skip this chapter of the laws of Malta. The way the courts of Malta are regulated is part of the criminal code for example and thus every lawyer who has a warrant to practice as a lawyer in Malta, needs to have sufficient knowledge of the criminal code to obtain the said warrant. This applies also for any civil lawyer and not only for the criminal lawyer of your choice.
It goes without saying that one needs to try and find a lawyer that can be trusted, obviously trust is a very personal thing and it is certainly not the same for everyone. For sure the criminal lawyer of your choice should not be anything like the character of Saul Goodman in the hit series Breaking Bad. Although he was a master in achieving the nearly impossible for his clientele, he was also not to be trusted. In Malta any advocate specialising in criminal law will be regulated by the code of conduct and any behaviour that is out of order will be penalised accordingly. Our country is too small to wonder too far of the beaten track and the world of a criminal lawyer is perhaps even smaller since in that world everybody knows everybody and any misbehavior will be known by all before one can realise what happened. This doesn’t mean that all lawyers are angels but those who are not can be easily filtered out with some open source searches. Although likely an expert in criminal law any one coming up in these searches might not always work ethically procedures and do more harm than good.
The Maltese law is made up out of well over six hundred chapters and these chapters all have a different length and the later chapters are all about newer legislation. Rather than updating an existing chapter like the criminal law or the chapters a civil lawyer work with, the government of the day chose to add a new chapter. This is done in a bid to keep the criminal code organised where legislation about new subjects has it’s own place and is not inserted in existing chapters where it might seem to get lost. It is however still a challenge for many criminal lawyer to stay up to date with all the developments but this is also where one can recognise lawyers who take their jobs seriously. Once a law degree has been obtained the study of a lawyer only starts, keeping up to date with developments as well as studying case law should keep a criminal lawyer nice and busy. The benefit for you as a client is evidently clear, an advocate who keeps up to date will be privy to the latest changes in the law and the latest judgments that can be used as argument in your favor.
To let an in depth knowledge of the criminal law work in your favor is what you expect from the lawyer of your choice. The criminal code regulates a number of things, most importantly it regulates the court itself as mentioned earlier on this page. With regulating you should think about the rules of the court and for example the procedures for jury trials. Another important part is how the court deals with different kind of requests coming from European counterparts or from foreign authorities or investigative bodies. A criminal lawyer today sees her or himself confronted with clients accused of crimes that have an increasingly international character and having that clientele forces the advocate to update on these regulations involving foreign entities. A criminal lawyer doesn’t need to know all the nitty gritty about all these regulations but should know the gist of each part and should above all be able to quickly familiarise with the subject in order to provide the very best service. Your criminal lawyer should be aware of everything regarding the client in order to give the best service possible and yet keep a professional distance.
Being aware of everything regarding the client is of course a relative thing. And advocate has to be careful not to become a criminal lawyer like the earlier mentioned Saul Goodman. He was not only very well aware of the activities of his clients, he was in another way sometimes even better in that very same activity or in hiding the activity of his clients. This is where keeping a professional distance is important, not only does a criminal lawyer need to protect his client, he or she also needs to protect him or herself from being associated too much with the client. This is not something for which the criminal law provides any handles but something that is rather regulated by the code of conduct for the advocacy. True professionals like you can find on this website can make this distinction and these should be your choice. We are not going to tell you which criminal lawyer to choose but we will show you where to find them.