Even good kids can get themselves into legal trouble. This week on Pink Mic Legal Confessions, Illinois Criminal Defense Attorney and Super Lawyer Matthew M. Fakhoury J.D. join us to explain how to help. Tune in and share this episode with fellow parents.
hello good afternoon welcome to pink mic legal confessions you know who i am i’m the host uh stephanie garces owner of garces law firm where we help you prepare for the unexpected um so today i have an awesome awesome guest today you’re not going to want to miss especially you parents who just sent your kids off to college you want to tune into this um i’m here with matt fakhoury he is a friend and a colleague of mine he’s a wonderful and respected criminal defense attorney in the area attorney matthew fakhoury who has helped countless of people and clients navigate the judicial system and has been named super lawyer so that’s pretty cool um matt thank you so much for joining me today can you please share a little bit more about your background for the viewers that don’t know who you are sure thank you for having me stephanie i appreciate it um as far as my background i grew up in the chicago area i went to depaul university for undergrad i moved away to st louis and attended st louis university school of law for law school after i graduated i began my career at the cook county state’s attorney’s office where i was a county assistant state’s attorney or a prosecutor as more commonly known while there i was in several different divisions appeals first municipal which just means misdemeanor court in the city a felony court i was transferred to a few different districts like rolling meadows one of my last assignments was what we call the chief judge assignment where we did a lot of one of our duties was to do a lot of expungements in ceilings or contest them i should say on behalf of the of the state um and while i was there um i began to notice that there was um you know a disservice if i can say that with a lot of people who are attempting to get the record expunged or sealed i didn’t feel they were being represented properly although i was on the opposite side and at the same time i was a professor at depaul university i was an adjunct professor there and a lot of my college students would come up to me and say hey i got into a bar fight a year ago and you know i’m about to graduate and this is on my record and i’m worried about it following me in my career i’m going into medical school i’m going into professional school and i’m having trouble you know getting accepted to either a job or like a program like that and my wheels started to turn i said man if somebody really did this right and uh represented clients properly in the chicago area they could really help the community and that was the inception of expunge chicago so about a year or two later i started the law office of matthew fakhoury we started expound chicago shortly thereafter our firm motto is expunge your past expand your future with expunge chicago our firm focuses on criminal defense but a large part of our practice area is also on criminal record clearing which means expungements ceilings and pardons in the state of illinois awesome awesome great well thank you so much for explaining that and uh matt we’re really excited to have you um because this is such an interesting topic and i know um you and i talked about this ahead of time and we’re trying to come up with a topic of like what is relevant what do people care about uh you know what we do well um it’s really important because if you know anything about anything as parents you know we do our best to try to keep our kids straight and narrow and like on a good path but you know as men and i were talking about the one day you know sometimes your kid gets their bed a bad hand or perhaps something happens where they’re at the wrong place at the wrong time so to guide them and protect them is what parents try to do however uh the topic of today is that even good kids find themselves in legal trouble and so uh today matt’s gonna talk about um kind of how to handle these situations um especially when there’s unanticipated events um parents looking for options to help out so our topic today is what to do if your kids get in legal trouble um and yes even good kids get in trouble right matt not just the the bad kids it’s like anyone can get in trouble so um some of the areas we’re going to cover today is uh what rights do parents have especially for juvenile cases compared to when children pass the age of 18 what type of cases are best handled by legal counsel uh whether that’s private or public and we’ll talk about the difference in a second um or if a child ends up being convicted or has a has a criminal record you know about something foolish or maybe something that that happened again wrong place in the wrong time does happen so that’s not uncommon and what options do they have so let’s dive in um so just really quick before i start i had a couple of viewers just joined so to recap my name is attorney stephanie garces donat the owner of garces law firm in arlington heights where we help parents prepare for the unexpected and uh joining us today is matthew fakhoury with law offices of matthew fakhoury he was also founded expunge chicago and um he’s going to be sharing his knowledge as a criminal defense attorney highly respecting the community to talk about what are your options as a parent if your kids get in trouble uh with the with the legal system that is so um if you missed last week’s episode by the way on pink mic legal confessions we talked about how to eliminate self-sabotage and unlock your potential with a certified uh coach that was that was really really awesome so if you didn’t have a chance to see that yet make sure to check out our facebook page or the youtube channel you’d be surprised when you can learn sitting at your desk watching this um so we welcome here on tuesdays to talk about uh different things and we’ll kind of uh be switching up the topics as you guys know already but i know a lot of you have questions so you don’t want to hear about me anymore we’re going to talk now about the viewers so um kind of to dive right in uh matt one of the questions um that that comes up a lot is you know what if someone’s child’s not directly committed crime right um or uh break the law if you want to call it that but was associated with the group that has a criminal record um is there a way to separate them from the accusations that are taking place there is so um if you’re talking about uh so first of all you talk about a child let’s just make sure we’re talking about the same thing so if you talk about a juvenile proceeding that’s any arrests or charges let’s say for an individual that’s under the age of 18. right so what would otherwise be an adult criminal case is now we’re talking about going through the juvenile justice system which the goal um we’d like to say is rehabilitation right so with the adult um criminal um area of law you’re talking more you hope it’s rehabilitation but truly there’s an area of a punishment that goes with it right there’s a there’s an angler and a perspective of punishment but with the juvenile justice system the idea or the theory is that we want to rehabilitate any possible offenders or deviant behavior right so um if your son or daughter is in a group and let’s say they get in trouble and there’s a police report that’s generated or if your son or daughter is directly charged with something there are many things you could do okay but um if there’s a group of people to answer a question directly that are in trouble and your son or daughter is a part of this and a report or a complaint is generated there is a way to bifurcate that report if it’s a juvenile proceeding at least and to try to clear or expunge it in other words right the procedure is a little different than it is in in adult court or criminal court or even criminal expungements in adult court but there is a way to petition the court to separate or reject the paperwork so it doesn’t follow this child this juvenile for the rest of his life into adulthood into professional school into his career his or her career so it’s expunged and sealed and it’s basically destroyed so yes there definitely is you need some basic information you know where the event or complaint occurred where the uh what what police department was involved the report number things of that nature but yes there’s definitely something you could do to make sure it doesn’t follow your son or daughter across his life well it’s fascinating because if what i’m hearing is is what you’re saying is basically there is an option to prevent um you know it getting worse maybe is the right way to say it right because you know as you know we talk a lot about you know people being associated with maybe people that are doing bad things and perhaps they were you know in the group somehow now find an accusation against them so it’s interesting to find that out matt that you can actually take preventative measures so that this doesn’t haunt them for the rest of their lives so thank you for sharing that um we have a question that came in just now um someone had asked if my child gets in trouble while they’re at way at school what should i do first now this is probably a parent that has just dropped their kid off at college where you know you know fake ids are really popular and like some of these bars are really regulated so what can they do if their kid gets in trouble while they’re not even you know in the same zip code a few things so number one is um statistically uh you know deviant behavior is going to happen between ages about 15 to 30 right that’s the the highest population i should age population of people getting into trouble right and it’s typically males at least statistically from a sociological standpoint right so uh first of all it’s almost expected all right things are going to happen with your son and daughter as they’re coming up through life in college in their late teens and early 20s the second thing is don’t panic right um people are going to get into trouble you probably got into trouble i got into a little bit of trouble right it’s never never you of course not so uh you know don’t panic and third is to hire a professional and in this setting you would hire a lawyer right now when you’re sick you go to the doctor when when there’s something that happens at your home you hire a professional to fix your home right it’s the same thing here you hire a professional because the professional in this case like a lawyer will realize the consequences of this particular behavior or of this proceeding well beyond what you may be thinking so you know you gave a great example okay the fake id example it happens all the time right in in any college town across the state and across the nation for that matter but that’s a felony right you could char you could get charged with a felony for possession of a faker or fraudulent id and if your son or daughter and this happens in champaign illinois all the time and i have clients there they went to a bar they got a fake id they tried to get in for whatever reason there was a problem they were arrested either for a felony or misdemeanor some of these kids go to court without an attorney because they don’t want to tell their parents because they’re emancipated at that point they’re 18 or 19 years old and they get charged with a felony they plead guilty to this felony and now it’s with them the rest of their life okay because most felonies cannot be expunged some can and you could seal many fellow felonies but you can’t completely erase or expunge a felony if you’re convicted of it so what i would say is get an attorney because not only are they going to try to resolve the actual case there that’s in court at that moment but they’re going to have an eye towards the future and maybe try to get you a disposition like we do that will set you up for an expungement or ceiling or some type of criminal record clearing a few years down the road when you’re eligible so hire an attorney don’t panic hire an attorney make sure that an attorney is aware of the the ramifications of the individual’s record and go from there that’s a great answer and actually i love that you said that you know don’t panic because actually i think you and i can agree that’s what we tell our clients probably on a daily basis like there’s always a solution to the problem like almost always so um it’s interesting too that you bring up the age because some of our viewers may be thinking um you know their kids might be in college or maybe they’re not in college yeah and they and correct me wrong map but you take two different avenues right depending on the age so someone’s 18 they’re emancipated they’re considered an adult if they’re not 18 well sometimes there’s different avenues you can take is that is that fair that’s correct right so uh typically it’s gonna depend on how you’re charged right so we can’t control as lawyers or even as parents although to some degree parents could get more involved in a juvenile proceeding but we can’t really control what they’re charged with or in what capacity so sometimes the offense is so serious that a juvenile is going to be charged as an adult but most of the time 99 of the time if it’s a juvenile offense they’re going to be charged as a juvenile and the parents are more involved in that respect if you’re emancipated you’re going to be in in big boy court as i tell my clients the consequences are more severe and there are like you said solutions to it to every case and there are expungements and ceilings and a lot of these cases as well an adult court as well but if it’s a juvenile proceeding again the whole basis of the juvenile justice system which um you know there are strong roots here in illinois in cook county as one of the first juvenile justice systems is on rehabilitation so most juvenile cases can be expunged or sealed because again it’s rehabilitation and as i was saying before when i was a you know an adjunct professor at depaul there was the biggest indicator and you brought this up earlier stephanie as to deviance or criminality in a juvenile or a young adult is his peers right it’s not a single family household it’s not socioeconomic status it’s not the music they’re listening to or the video games they’re playing it’s the delinquency of their peers so if you see that there’s problems with your son or daughter going into college with the people they’re hanging out with right those kids are getting into trouble there’s run-ins with the police you know the best predictor of the future is the past as i tell people it’s going to happen and now factor in immaturity maybe some alcohol maybe minor drug use things like that it’s an elixir for a very bad um experience at one point or another in an individual’s college career so you know keep that in mind as you’re watching your children um go through college yeah absolutely and this is great advice too matt because i think this is like the practical advice like what you know we’re attorneys yes under the law but it’s actually this is like practical advice and and i actually love the fact that you’re honing in on the peers because i do think that a lot of people underestimate that you know they say oh they’re you know they’re just being boys they’re just being girls you know i hear that saying a ton um you know parents when the kid acts in mature or does something oh they’re just doing this because of whatever but perhaps it’s bigger than that perhaps there’s a way to really um kind of supervise better or even maybe just uh take note of the people they’re hanging out with and what’s going on so i love that you talk about that um now speaking of expungements is there a time period that you recommend um individuals wait for pursuing an expungement yes so um if if possible you should expunge the case right away right so if you have a pending case obviously you have to wait until the case is resolved or there’s some type of official disposition before you expunge it but once the case is resolved you could possibly expunge it right away if the case is dismissed right we call it a nollie pros here in illinois or what we call an sol which means stricken off docket with leaf to reinstate there’s a slight delay you have to wait about four or five months for that but if you could expunge it immediately obviously you should do so if you plead guilty to an offense okay there are waiting periods you cannot expunge it right away especially in adult court so let’s say you’re you know charged let’s think of something typical like a retail theft or a minor drug possession charge which is common in in people of that age if you plead guilty to that you might be able to get your record expunged or sealed but you’re going to have to wait two possibly three years after your sentence is over a lot of people think oh you know they they google it because everybody’s an expert these days right i’m an expert on medicine i’m an expert on all these things because i google it so a lot of people a lot of our clients will google you know expungements and when can i wait or when can i file it and people say oh well it says two years from the time that i that i was done with my case or two years from the time i received the case and the answer is no it’s two years possibly depending on the outcome of the case from the time the case was completely resolved which means the sentence was over so you might have to wait a good two or three years depending on how long your sentence before you could possibly expand your seal or record yeah absolutely um and we have a couple questions that are coming in a lot of viewers actually today so uh one of the questions that one of our viewers has is what are some major factors parents or young adults should know slash look for when searching for an attorney that’s a great question because i think like you said people go on google but what are some things they should consider what do you think about that so here are a few things i would consider number one is you want to pick an attorney who is familiar with that local jurisdiction okay so i have clients who call me from all over the state and they offer me um you know a lot of money to go represent them in southern illinois or central illinois and i say no i i said i appreciate it and it’s flattering but i’m going to do you a disservice because i’m not familiar with those judges i’m not familiar with those prosecutors i’m not familiar with the local procedures and i would not do you uh i would not serve you properly as an attorney right so what i would recommend is number one find an attorney in that local community wherever this case is pending right number two is go on google and look up this this attorney’s reviews right now luckily with technology there’s yelp there’s ava which is a great place that people leave reviews there’s google where people leave reviews and you know every once in a while you’re gonna see kind of a weird review but if there are themes right and if you see that constantly this person is getting reviewed at five stars and they’re saying the same things he’s responsive or she’s you know great and she calls us back and whatever so on and so forth that’s probably is that’s going to be the case but if you see that this person obviously is not um you know responsive or you know is is not properly representing people in these reviews i would steer away from them the other thing from from our realm in a criminal perspective when you’re thinking about you know an expungement or sailing or criminal case you want an attorney like our law firm that does it from start to finish we’ll represent you on minor and major charges right whether it’s a traffic ticket or whether it’s a class x felony and our eye is towards the future right we’re going to think about the best disposition we could get you in order to expunge or seal this down the road right so we’re going to take the case from the beginning and then we’re going to finish it all the way through the end until we that judge signs the expungement or ceiling order so in this realm in criminal in the criminal defense realm that’s what i advise you want an attorney you’re going to work with from start to finish you don’t want to separate this and hire one attorney to do this and hire the other attorney to do the expungement or ceiling you want somebody who’s going to be familiar with the case from the from the inning and see through to the end that’s what i would recommend yeah great i love that and by the way google reviews are something that as attorneys we can’t dispute so for those of you watching saying okay i’m going to google uh me or matt or whoever you’re looking for um make sure you check those out because i can tell you the reviews on there um i didn’t pay people to put them there or good or bad but i can’t really dispute them and so these things matter because people are going to be honest you know we all look for reviews when like the other day i was looking for a dentist i was googling reviews because i want to make sure i know who’s about to do my dental work so that sort of thing matters um and that’s that’s great advice um we had a really interesting comment from one of our viewers um talking about how important it is um to think about that people forget that the brain doesn’t fully develop and recognize the consequences um you know much later than the age of 18. and social pressure is really strong for young people um matt kind of going off of that i mean this is a true statement and uh thank you um for that for that comment um but one of the things i talk about i guess with with my younger clients or even clients that are much older than me you know i always tell them it’s all mindset right um you have to be the leader don’t be the follower and um is there any advice that you would give our viewers or even young parents that are trying to deal with their their kids adolescence maybe they’re in a group that um isn’t great you know what what kind of advice would you give them practical advice outside of um you know just the legal stuff to try to help them here yeah absolutely so first of all um i think that’s a great comment and it’s true right your mind is not fully developed they say until about the age of 25 or 26 right unfortunately legally right the consequences are fully developed at the age of 18 right so um but the court recognizes that right so if you’re a first-time offender if if you are a young man or a young woman and you get into some trouble even serious trouble again the goal is not to send you to prison on your first case and throw away the key right the court recognizes that more than ever and there’s diversionary programs is what we call them in order to try to help you out but from a practical sense what do you do okay what do you do is you tell your children because your children really are are going to be good or bad so to speak whether they’re around you living at home or they’re away at college right they’re the same individual right so you can’t monitor them all the time but what you tell your children is to trust their gut if they’re in a situation where they’re at a frat party right and one of the older frat members is bringing heavy drugs like cocaine right because it happens in college case in college uh campuses all across the nation and they’re they’re distributing and using this cocaine right you tell your son or daughter who you’ve raised who hopefully you’ve instilled these values throughout their life that they need to separate themselves from that situation right they need to remove themselves because that situation is not only going to lead to drug possession or drug use but it could lead to a possible rape charge it could lead to so many other things right a fight right where somebody could be very seriously injured because you’re outside of your mind almost literally right when you’re on a substance so i would tell parents to you know obviously monitor their their the peers of their friends but at the same time you know reinstill those values in your children say hey if you feel something’s wrong there’s no shame in walking away from this party from walking away from this girl from moving removing yourself from this situation in order to stay out of trouble because now you’re you’re an adult you’re not a child anymore and the consequences are going to be more severe yeah absolutely and that’s wonderful advice on top of the fact that you know in college especially you have um this need to want to fit in um with your peers um and what’s interesting about college and remembering my um my experience personally it’s like you have so many different people from different walks of life all in the same place um some people who obviously are there to study and they graduate and other people they don’t graduate um so so that’s actually not talked about enough i think i had plenty of smart had a lot of ambitious uh students that just took the wrong path and ended up dropping out getting expelled et cetera so that is something to think about uh parents as you’re as you’re attending sending your kids off to college um or just in general you know those are things that people don’t talk about and again it leads to bad consequences because they made bad decisions um and one of the questions that came in kind of similar to that one is um about the license you know can my child lose their license from a red light camera or parking tickets that’s a good question that’s a great question so um if your child gets into some parking difficulties it doesn’t pay the the parking fees or traffic violations yes their license could get suspended um you see this happening where students are afraid or children are afraid to tell their parents that hey i got a couple parking tickets i didn’t realize i should i can’t park on the street when i’m away at school or i went through these red lights so yeah yes it can happen so just be aware of that i mean a red light violation when we hear of it isn’t the end of the world but again now that you’re an adult it could suspend your license and actually when you’re under the age of 21 there’s less leniency for those types of things rather than when you’re over 21 they’ll let you go a little bit with some of these traffic or moving violations but when you’re under 21 they will actually suspend your license a lot quicker when they feel that you’re possibly a risk to yourself or others on the road interesting yeah you think it’d be the opposite but but maybe they’re again um the court thinks about another way obviously that’s interesting um so i know we talked i know my viewers i promise i would tell them about um private lawyers versus public lawyer so if someone doesn’t have the money uh obviously money is a big factor and let’s be honest that’s actually a lot to do with um people’s choices in hiring private or public attorneys um what happens when someone doesn’t have a lawyer um especially in a criminal case um no matter you know what what kind of criminal case what are their options so their options if they don’t have a lawyer are to um ask for a public defender right so a public defender is a lawyer like a lot of people don’t realize it’s almost insulting that they don’t realize that a public defender is actually a lawyer they’re a licensed lawyer just like you or i right uh but the public defenders provided by the state to represent them and um they’re free in other words so um the way to do that is typically the correct way to do that is that the judge will have you fill out what we call an affidavit of assets and liabilities to see if you’re eligible to get this public defender assuming that you are in your indigence the court will provide you with this public defender and many of them are great most of them are fine right they actually are good in the sense that they’re usually in the same courtroom um every day they know the prosecutors very well they know the judges very well they know the tendency of the judge and how he or she would rule now would rule now with that said i also think it’s better in most instances to hire a private attorney if you can okay if you do have the resources even limited um i would go and try to find an attorney on google like you were mentioning and even if you know i have a lot of clients who come to me and say hey i you know here’s what i have here’s my case what is your fee and i tell them and they say hey i can’t afford that can you help me out a little bit and of course i do right i help them out i’ll either reduce the fee or we’ll do some type of payment plan even a long payment plan over several months or a year or so to help them but you know from from my perspective i might have less cases than a public defender has so i could default more attention to your particular case so that’s one advantage in addition i have several attorneys who work for me so if i can’t get to your case that particular morning for whatever reason if you hire me last minute we have several other great associates shout out to colleen lefevre and caitlin wilder who are great attorneys who are motivated attorneys who are experienced attorneys who will take your case and are just as good as me so with the resources of a private lawyer a private firm you have the resources of a firm right so that that’s one advantage that you get individual um attention and maybe a little bit better customer service um in in that realm rather than the public defender’s office because they’re they’re very burdened they have a lot of cases that they’re dealing with in most instances so you know sometimes i would look at both if you really can’t afford it go with the public defender if you don’t like the public defender’s office there’s a one more option you could go to a legal aid clinic there are criminal defense attorneys at the legal aid clinic you have to apply similarly to what you would apply with the affidavit of assets and liabilities with the court and you could see if you could qualify for a free attorney with one of these legal aid organizations which are all over the city as well yeah absolutely and just so um we can kind of clarify that what we’re talking about is specifically criminal cases so i like to make a lot of civil cases um and i do like to kind of specify to people that this only works in the criminal setting um unfortunately in the civil case meaning anything outside of criminal um those unfortunately you don’t have a public defender you don’t have uh someone that’s assigned to you however um but like matt was saying we also kind of offer um alternative fee arrangements to make sure it’s feasible to you because that is who we service as well so we’re not we’re not just saying gonna turn you away because you can’t pay we do offer alternative fees so uh payments and that’s kind of why i want to talk about that because there is a difference between the civil and the criminal matters but yes uh of course anyone that um is charged with a criminal uh case of course um is entitled to representation i mean it’s your right um so in case um you’re confused about that i hope that clarifies that um now i know we talked a little bit about costs but um for expungements uh matt in your experience is there like a ranks punishments of like payments uh does it matter in the case um how do you how can someone say uh is this affordable for me or not how do you how do you figure that out so um if you talk to 10 different attorneys you might get 10 different quotes is the truth now the way we price our expungements our ceilings is the number of cases the us the severity of the case or cases and the number of jurisdictions we have to file in so you know many people will come up this and this happened last week somebody’s about 40 years old he’s about to change jobs he goes man when i was in my 20s i was hanging around with the wrong crowd ironically enough we were talking about that earlier i got into trouble all over the state and they have and we ran their criminal background and that’s what you need to do to see you know what what you’re working with so to speak and they had cases in all over cook county enrolling meadows and skokie they had cases in lake county had cases in dupage county so at that point with many cases and multiple jurisdictions it’s going to be more expensive right the more cases you’re working with and the more jurisdictions we would need to file and the more expensive it’s going to be um is it affordable yes it’s affordable um you know you could you could i’m sure you could find um you know attorneys who would do this for different pricing but you also want to find an attorney like we were saying earlier who’s going to make your case into a story and not just a file right that’s what i tell clients right the judge is going to see you as a file or that prosecutor might see your your case as just a file it’s my job to add a pulse to your file so when we do that hearing i’m going to know everything about you leading up to your cases during your cases after your cases i’m going to want character letters we’re going to want awards and certificates i’m going to bring your family in so they could possibly test the fire at least or be in the gallery so the judge sees that you people there that you’re tied to the community so you know for us personally if you’re asking me we’re not we’re not the cheapest firm out there when it comes to expungements or ceilings we definitely feel we’re the best um and that we serve service the client the best because we focus on these things that maybe other attorneys don’t want to yeah absolutely and thank you for answering that because i think the viewers are always wondering that and you know you get the calls as much as i do people want to know is this feasible for me and so um you’ve heard it here first it really depends on your case but also in general don’t ever feel like you can’t uh reach out to me or to matt personally if you have any questions uh we certainly do free consultations matt are you doing free consultations we do free consultations we do them through zoom or in person now uh we’re happy to do a free consultation absolutely cool cool great that’s what that’s what i wanted to confirm so so yeah you heard it here first again there are free consultations so i always tell viewers you know we do get a lot of calls sometimes people will say oh i watch this video on this can you put me in the right direction you know and so um i love what you said earlier it’s like you you add a pulse to the case that is so awesome um i like i kind of got like a visual when you said that so that’s pretty cool very cool don’t take that line from me don’t use that with your clients okay yeah i was gonna say you might want that you might want to what is it called we’ll copyright it yeah or trademark it we want to operate that um but uh but matt do you have anything else to share uh for the viewers that we haven’t covered anything else you wanted to touch on that we didn’t get to today uh you’re cutting out on me i’m sorry you cut out on me a little bit you said anything else i’d like to touch on yeah if there’s anything else that we didn’t mention or something you wanted to touch on you can certainly um share it with us um you know the only thing i’d like to touch on maybe that we haven’t um talked about is you know we talked about peers and and students getting into trouble i had a client who was literally the valedictorian of his high school class and uh he was working at a local retail shop and unfortunately he got into a little bit of trouble when friends came in and asked him you know to give him a discount on some items and he did and he didn’t realize the consequences of it now this kid was going into college he had a full ride uh to school can you hear me okay yeah i can’t sorry i’m just confused that this could actually be a case but go ahead yeah oh yeah he was a valedictorian of his of his high school this was in the area um and uh he got into a little bit of trouble and uh he came to me he was charged with a misdemeanor and it was a class a was the highest level misdemeanor so we were able to resolve the case but again our eye was towards clearing up his record because this young man ultimately wanted to be a doctor so what i’m saying is the reason i brought this up is even these like you said earlier great kids a valedictorian who’s never been in trouble before can get into trouble it’s not the end of the world just make sure you get the right help somebody who could take the case from beginning to end and who realizes that the the severity and the consequences that this may have on the individual’s record or career so that’s the only only other advice i’d give yeah absolutely so basically um no case too small or too big is basically covered by your firm which is great um because i think even that example i mean that seems so minimal but to think that there’s consequences for that that’s that’s exactly why we have you on the show so that we can educate viewers on this sort of information and use our platform so that people really understand that they do have options and there’s always a solution and that goes for any legal matters by the way for the viewers it’s not just criminal matters it’s anything um you know we do an estate plan we do probate we do civil cases if you have any issues you know uh always feel free to pick up the phone again free consultations you can always just pick our brain and we’ll point the right direction if we can’t help you so that’s great to know so man if anybody wants to contact you where is the best way that they can contact you please visit us on xpungechicago.com that is our expungement website we also have illinoisdefense.com actually ildefense.com our phone number is 847-920-4540
seems like everybody does things online now so please visit our websites we’re always happy to offer a free consultation on criminal and expungement or record clearing matters as well great awesome thank you so much for uh for all your information for taking the time out of your day to really educate people and i personally think uh thank you for spending time with us today because i know i know how much information you’ve given and it’s really invaluable to our viewers and i promise you people will be very happy if they watch this video because they would have learned something new especially for the parents that are nervous about their kids and who they’re hanging out with this is really important stuff so um you guys know me already where to contact me you can always call call or text us to set up consultations for us personally we have a website www.garceslawfirm.com you can always chat us there as well and we are fully bilingual we speak spanish so if you need anyone that needs those services please keep us in mind so i want to thank all of our viewers for your questions we had a lot of viewers today so i’m very happy and thankful for our loyal viewers who like watching this on tuesdays um and matt thank you so much for joining us we encourage you to watch every time we have a video um after the fact you can always see it on youtube you can see it on facebook and we always can help um share this within your family be in friends people want to see this stuff it’s free so why not um of course if your child ever encounters a legal issue please contact matt he knows what he’s doing i promise you that um and i just cherish the opportunity to work with any of our viewers that may want to um some legal services or if it’s free consultation we can um handle that as well and so can matt so as always i invite you here to watch the show on tuesdays at 1 pm pink mic legal confessions and um matt i hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and thank you so much thank you so much for having me i appreciate it my pleasure thank you stephanie of course and uh we hope to see you guys again next week take care everyone