Lawyers are involved in nearly any industry where people stand to make a lot of money or use expensive assets. Yes, it is common to hire lawyers such as criminal defense attorneys if someone is accused of federal crimes. Criminal defense lawyers can also be hired after a drunk driving incident that resulted in injuries (and probably some expensive 24 hour emergency care). True enough. But you may also want to learn legal terminology for other endeavors too, from buying or selling a house to facing unfair eviction or even writing a will or if you suffer bank levy. Legal terminology such as “bank levy” and anything found in a legal will can be a bit confusing at first, and legal terminology can also make all the difference if a landlord and tenant are clashing. When is it time to hire a personal injury lawyer or deal with lemon laws? Or what about child custody lawyers or buying a house? Whatever you’re trying to do, a lawyer can help you understand the legal terminology involved and advance your interests.
Personal Injuries and the Law
This is probably among the more common reasons why Americans need help from lawyers to advance their interests in litigation or even a court of law (not all cases actually go to court). The law, and all its legal terminology, is designed to ensure that if someone hurts another, then compensation will be had. While nothing can be truly guaranteed in a situation like this, someone who suffered bodily harm may have trouble with all the legal terminology and turn to a lawyer to decipher it into a compelling case. Often, this is done in two particular contexts: the workplace, and the road.
Car accidents are tragically common, and every year, a few million car wrecks occur and injure that many Americans, if not more. Some cases in which victims can’t be saved by 24 hour emergency care even result in fatalities. In short, many Americans get hurt from car accidents, and they want help with their medical bills. The injured driver may also be unable to perform paying work in the future, so they’ll need help for that, too.
A fairly similar legal case may take place if a worker gets injured on the job. Some occupations involve more risk than others, and some of the riskier fields of work include mining, construction, assembly lines, park rangers, and indeed most outdoor jobs or any work that involves heavy and powerful machines. At a construction site, a worker may accidentally inhale hazardous fumes or silicate particles, and indeed many construction workers suffer from lung disease on the job. Or, these workers may slip and fall from a great height on an incomplete building, or they may get an arm or leg trapped in a machine or crushed under something heavy. Workers might also get heatstroke during summer or get run over by a vehicle whose driver was not looking. Similar injuries may occur in a factory, and park rangers might slip and fall down a hill, or get attacked by dangerous wildlife such as wolves or cougars. Or, insect or spider bites endanger their lives while on the job.
The legal terminology may be rather complex, so a construction crew will typically have a specialized construction lawyer on hand to help out. These attorneys can handle legal terminology for construction work in case an accident comes up, and different teams on a project may debate who is responsible for an accident or injury (or blame each other if the project gets behind schedule or over budget). Injured workers can turn to their lawyer, or they can even seek out personal injury lawyers from outside law firms who can help.
As for car accident victims, the lawyer can not only decipher legal terminology and laws, but also overcome obstacles in court such as an insurance company that refuses to cooperate, or a confusing case that involves multiple parties. This attorney will also figure out the financial impact those injuries will have on their client, and factor that into the case.
Legal Terminology for Criminal Defense
Suppose someone is charged with a federal crime and they must appear in a criminal court of law later on. Among other crimes, drunk driving is a common reason for Americans to face criminal charges; in fact, many law firms are specially designed for drunk driver criminal defense work. Every day, thousands of Americans drive while drunk, and police officers can only catch so many of them. Such drivers are likely to cause an accident and damage property and threaten lives. A drunk driver may not only be charged for the drunk driving (DUI) itself but also charged with involuntary manslaughter if someone was killed in the crash. By law, driving drunk is defined as operating a motor vehicle while your BAC (blood alcohol content) is 0.08% or higher, though some state laws have different (often lower) thresholds. Just drinking and driving is a crime, whether or not a crash or injuries took place. Once you’re pulled over by someone with law enforcement patches, you may realize right then and there that you’re going to need legal help.
Someone charged with a DUI can turn to these criminal defense law firms and find and hire a lawyer whose skills and experience are to their liking. This lawyer can explain all relevant legal terminology to their client, and support their case in court. While no outcome can be guaranteed here, it may be possible for some charges to be changed to lesser ones, or even have some dropped. If no one was injured and no property was damaged, and/or this is the offender’s first offense like this, the odds may be more favorable. In some cases, a stiff penalty such as jail time or a heavy fine may be exchanged for lighter fines, court-mandated alcohol recovery programs, and having an ignition interlock device fitted into the convict’s car. This is a compromise where the convict may continue driving as they wish, but they must submit clean breath samples in order to unlock the device’s inner mechanisms and start the car. Damaging or tampering with the device may result in penalties.
Legal Terminology and Divorce
It should be pointed out that not all divorce cases in the United States actually call for the aid of lawyers such as child custody lawyers. Some do, though, and they may end up as a rather public spectacle in court. Around 40-50% of all marriages in the United States end in divorce, and statistics say that every 13 seconds, one such divorce will take place, every day. Americans divorce for many different reasons, but infidelity, substance abuse, and verbal, physical, or sexual abuse or violence are common reasons. Some divorces are less dramatic and may take place simply because the two spouses have different lifestyles or spending habits, or they simply lost interest in each other.
For reference, those low-intensity divorces often require the aid of divorce mediators rather than lawyers, and this is a much cheaper and more private route to take. The two spouses will negotiate the divorce’s terms themselves, and there may be relatively few assets in the marriage to negotiate, and the spouses will get along relatively well. The mediator’s job is to stay neutral and help draw out productive ideas from both parties and help maintain clear and effective communication. The mediator is more like a referee in that sense.
But other divorces will indeed require the aid of a lawyer, and it often starts when one spouse visits divorce law firms and hires a lawyer to represent them. Then they file divorce paperwork, and the other spouse may hire an attorney of their own to represent their interests. The spouses will battle over the marriage’s assets and the divorce’s terms through their lawyers, who will understand divorce legal terminology and law to advance their respective clients’ interests. In cases where one spouse had abused the other, the abused spouse may even relocate to a separate residence and interact with their spouse only through their lawyer. The spouses can fight over ownership and rights to just about anything in their marriage, from a car or RV to a vacation house, a residence, or even family heirlooms (jewelry, gold items, etc) or a privately owned business and bank accounts.
Child custody lawyers may be hired to do just that: determine custody of a child or children in the divorcing household. Children aged 12 and over are allowed to speak to the judge privately about their living preferences after the divorce takes place. And while no outcome can be guaranteed here, a parent may be more likely to win custody if they have a stable income and have not demonstrated abusive behavior. Visiting rights may be another matter of debate, such as when and if the parent without child custody may visit their child in the future.
Lawyers and a Will
This is a fairly straightforward arena where legal terminology can do a lot of good for a client. Many Americans have a written will, but many others do not, for various reasons. Some procrastinate and forget to have one written, or they believe that they have too few assets to make a will worth the effort. Or, they haven’t written one because they believe that they are too young, and associate wills with senior citizens on their deathbed. But this does not have to be the case; any adult can and probably should have a will written, since no one can predict accidents or disease. A person may not need to wait until their senior years for a will to be relevant.
What’s the risk of dying without writing a will? If this happens, then the deceased person’s estate can be abused by just about anyone, such as greedy and dishonest family members who may leave too little for other relatives. If the deceased person had debt, such as if they owned a business and they had loans to pay back, the creditors may take everything and leave nothing for the family. Outcomes like these are not to be desired, so an estate lawyer can be hired to help. Such lawyers will interview their clients about their assets and their intentions with those assets, then write a clear and legally binding will. In this way, the person’s estate will indeed be handled according to their will upon the event of their death, however soon or far off that may be. In fact, such a will can appoint an adult family member to act as guardian for a minor’s share of the will until that minor turns 18 years old.
Other Uses For Lawyers
On a final note, there are a few other areas that involve legal terminology or complex laws that a client needs help with. What about buying a house? Even for experienced buyers, this is a complex process that involves a lot of paperwork, so hiring a lawyer to help means getting all that paperwork done correctly and on time. Such a lawyer can also help if the new homeowner faces a problem, such as eviction.
Speaking of taxes and money, a lawyer can be hired if a person experiences a bank levy. What does this mean? A creditor party such as the IRS or a credit card company may order the debtor’s bank to hand over some money to help cover their debt, without the debtor’s expressed permission. Some creditors must sue the debtor in court and win the case first in order to do this. Wage garnishing is another form of involuntary debt payment that the debtor may find highly objectionable. After all, such actions may even leave the debtor unable to cover basic expenses such as rent, groceries, or prescription medicine payments. If the debtor acts fast, they can hire a lawyer who may try to reverse the bank levy and protect the debtor’s financial life.
One final arena where debts and attorneys overlap: bankruptcy. A bankrupt person or company is legally admitting that they cannot pay their debts, so they get audited. The debtor and creditor(s) will cooperate in bankruptcy court to formulate and make use of a repayment plan. This might even involve downsizing, restructuring, or even dissolving the debtor so that the debt can be repaid to whatever extent proves possible. Lawyers can help protect the debtor from unfair practices, and help them develop a repayment plan to present to the creditors.
