Steven Fairlie | North Wales Accident & Injury Lawyer

He has successfully handled numerous civil (slip and fall, auto accidents, land development litigation, etc.) and criminal trials (narcotics, DUI, capital murder, robbery, rape, etc.). Prior to private practice, he worked on the Narcotics Team and the Major Crimes Team of the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office from 1996 to 2000. He successfully argued for the death penalty in 1999 and was lead prosecutor in a case involving $55 million of cocaine. Subsequently, as a defense attorney, he took the appeal of a client sentenced to death and convinced the prosecutor to vacate the death sentence. He used forensic tire print evidence to prove another client not guilty of attempted murder. In yet another case he uncovered evidence which reduced the offer on a robbery case from 25–50 years down to 2 years probation. He represented one individual charged with 3 separate charges of DUI and had the first case dismissed at the Preliminary Hearing, the second accepted into the A.R.D. program, and the third case dismissed after a trial judge granted suppression of all evidence in the case. Mr. Fairlie has obtained not-guilty verdicts in major jury trials involving shootings, burglaries, etc. despite positive eyewitness identifications of his clients. On appeal, he has successfully argued for reversal of a death sentence in one case and a sentence of 70 years in another case. Recent successful plea negotiations include 2 1/2 to 5 years in the case of a man who struck his wife in the head with a hammer and strangled her and 6 to 12 years in a First Degree Murder case.

In 2007, Mr. Fairlie went to trial on a case involving more than $50 million of land transactions and settled the case in the second week of trial. He has obtained six-figure settlements in numerous personal injury cases, including car accident, back injury, and dog bite cases.

Mr. Fairlie often serves as a speaker for various organizations such as the Pennsylvania Bar Institute’s Annual (2007–2010) Criminal Law Symposium in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Montgomery and Bucks County Bar Associations, and various law enforcement training programs. He also teaches numerous other continuing legal education seminars for lawyers every year.

He earned his B.A. in Government and Law from Lafayette College in 1991 and his J.D. from The Dickinson School of Law in 1995 where he was a member of the Appellate Moot Court Board, the Environmental Law Journal, and a Chairman of the Student Bar Association. He has been Co-Chairman or Chairman of the Montgomery County Bar Association’s Criminal Defense Committee since 2001, a member of the Montgomery County Bar Association’s Judiciary Committe and Trial Lawyers’ Section, a member of the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s Professionalism Committee and Civil Litigation Section, a member of the Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Hotline Panel of Experts Committee, a member of the Montgomery County Sexual Assault Task Force, a member of The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and an Associate Member of the Philadelphia Bar Association. Mr. Fairlie’s areas of practice include civil litigation, personal injury, criminal law and construction litigation.

Mr. Fairlie enjoys scuba-diving, hunting, fishing and coaching youth sports.

I had a DUI case where my toxicologist was able to demonstrate that all of the substances my clients blood were either lawfully prescribed drugs or metabolites of the same drugs, within the normal therapeutic range, and that the alcohol in her system was not sufficient to cause unsafe driving, even in combination with the drugs. I also had a robbery case where my expert established that recently prescribed drugs had such an impact on my client's mental state that he was not aware of the nature of what he was doing and was essentially "sleepwalking."

Clients should look for independently awarded recognition of the lawyer from many different sources, such as client reviews, organizations that recognize attorney excellence, leadership in the local Bar Association, etc. many lawyers will state or lead a client to believe that they are the world's greatest lawyer. The only way for the client to verify this is to look at what other independent sources are saying about the lawyer. The best place to find this information is on the lawyer's website as I think it would be very hard for a lawyer to substantially misrepresent his background when his website is open to the public for verification. Obviously client reviews should be examined from other sources and client reviews on the lawyer's own website should be ignored. That is why we don't bother to put client testimonials on our own website. Obviously we would cherry pick the best reviews, so I don't think it really provides the client with anything useful.

Local knowledge is often the key to success in my business. You need to know the likely outcome in the case from the beginning to be able to know what steps you can take to improve that likely outcome. I always tell clients who call me from outside my normal geographical practice area that they are better off with a local lawyer and I will refer them to one of the lawyers in my network of peers who is more familiar with that particular court. The only way I will take the case is if the client convinces me that there is a particular need for me to handle the case such as mistrust of the local lawyers (which is usually misplaced) or specialized experience in a niche area that few other lawyers are familiar with.

Handling a case for a client who thought there was no chance of success and handing that client a dismissal, withdrawal of all charges, or not guilty verdict.

• Member | Montgomery Bar Association        
  Member | Pennsylvania Trial Lawyers Association        
  Member | Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
  Member | Montgomery County Criminal Defense Committee

• Top-Rated Attorneys in Pennsylvania, The Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer, The Legal Intelligencer, 2015

• Criminal Defense | Third Degree Murder | Client confessed to shooting girlfriend's father in back of head while sleeping and then disposing of body

Steven Fisher Fairlie has been a Premium Member since April 07, 2016.
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• About | Steven Fairlie