Defence run by someone who prosecuted.

For many people, a criminal file starts with a phone call from the police asking them to come in "for a chat". Our advice is almost always the same: exercise your right to silence and speak to a lawyer first. There are limited exceptions — you may need to provide identifying information, and alibi details have their own rules — but beyond that you are not required to answer questions, and anything you say can be used against you.

A police interview is not a neutral conversation. By the time you are invited in, the police usually have a working theory of the case, and the interview is where they test it — and lock in your account before you have seen any of the evidence. What feels like clearing things up can become the most damaging hour on the prosecution file, and an account given without advice is very hard to walk back later.

Staying silent at the interview is not the same as refusing to ever take responsibility. Where accepting responsibility is the right course, there are better forums for it — a considered plea, or a restorative justice conference, properly prepared, where genuine engagement carries real weight at sentencing. The point is to make those decisions with advice, on your timetable rather than the police's. If an interview is looming, contact chambers first — urgent criminal matters get priority.

Little gets decided at a first appearance — it is a brief procedural hearing where the charges are confirmed, disclosure is requested, and bail and its conditions are dealt with. A plea is rarely required on the day; instead the court adjourns the case so the police file can be read and proper advice taken. Short as the hearing is, it is no formality: the conditions imposed there are often the ones you go on living under until the matter resolves.

Bail conditions deserve more attention than they usually get. Residence, curfew, non-association and non-contact conditions all constrain daily life, and in family violence matters they frequently run alongside a protection order covering the same people and the same address — which can mean being unable to return home. Conditions that seemed workable on day one have a way of becoming unworkable by month three, and breaching them can see you arrested and your bail put back before the court.

Our job at this stage is to get realistic conditions set from the start, apply to vary the ones that don't hold up, and push early for the disclosure the defence actually needs. What is decided in that first week — conditions, contact, what has already been said to the police — sets the shape of the whole file.

The plea is the biggest single decision on any defence file, and it should never be made before the disclosure has been read closely. Where the matter is defended, the next question is the forum: a Judge Alone Trial, where a judge — usually a District Court judge — decides both the facts and the law, or a jury trial — typically in the High Court for serious matters, or the District Court for some Category 3 offences — where a jury of 12 decides the facts. Judge Alone Trials are usually quicker and can suit technical defences; the choice between the two is strategic, and one of the first conversations we have.

If the matter ends in a guilty plea or conviction, sentencing is governed by the Sentencing Act 2002. The court weighs accountability, denunciation, deterrence, protection of the community, the victim's interests and rehabilitation, alongside the principle of the least restrictive outcome appropriate to the offending. The available sentences run from a fine or community work through home detention to imprisonment — and in the right case, a discharge without conviction under s106 is open where, under the s107 test, the consequences of a conviction would be out of all proportion to the gravity of the offence.

Good sentencing outcomes are built, not hoped for. Written submissions that engage squarely with the statutory purposes, references that speak to something concrete, rehabilitation already underway, and — in suitable cases — a restorative justice process the court is required to take into account — all of it genuinely changes where a sentence lands. That preparation starts well before the sentencing date.