Adam Pearlman | Santa Barbara Criminal Defense Lawyer

• California State Bar Association
• Federal Bar Association - CentralCoast Chapter
• Santa Barbara County Bar Association
• Ventura County Bar Association
• William L. Gordon Inn of Court
• California Attorneys for Criminal Justice
• National College of DUI Defense
• California DUI Attorney Association
• National Associate of Criminal Defense Lawyers

Recently I represented the girlfriend of a man charged with murder. When the DA found out she was going to testify and your testimony would likely exonerated him, the DA indicted her on charges of being an accessory to murder. This is a very serious charge. The DA also hinted that they were going to charge her with murder since she was present. I go the case and filed a motion to dismiss the indictment. This took many months but we prevailed and the Judge dismissed the case. Later, her boyfriend went to trial on charges of murder and was only convicted of involuntary manslaughter, thanks in part to the testimony of my client.

There are many different ingredients in building a successful law practice. You can't just be good at one thing (marketing) but bad at other things (trial attorney). Being a successful criminal defense attorney requires excellent trial skills. It requires you to be a hard working: you can't stop working because it is 5:00 pm. It requires you to market yourself to potential clients. It requires good customer service. You need to be able to communicate with your clients and make sure they are informed of what is going on and what will happen in their case. It also requires great analytical skills: the ability to consider all of the evidence in a case and be able to know how to in the best interests of your client. I pride myself on being an extremely hard working trial attorney. I work late most nights and work every weekend on my clients cases. I was a prosecutor for over 9 years and a defense attorney for over 9 years. I have done almost 100 jury trials. I have tried more cases than most defense attorney's my age. I also get a lot of referral cases from former clients. That tells me that I am satisfying my clients needs.

Local knowledge is incredibly important in every criminal defense case. You have to know which Judges go easy/hard on particular types of cases. Some attorneys from Los Angeles appear in Ventura and Santa Barbara and act and do things the way they do in Los Angeles. It just doesn't work in these smaller counties. You should always hire a local attorney or an attorney who is familiar with your courthouse where your case is going to be held. I know all of the Judges that I appear in front of. I either know them from my 19 years of practice as a criminal attorney or I have previously worked with them in the District Attorney's office. My knowledge of the idiosyncrasies of the Ventura and Santa Barbara courts gives me an advantage over other attorneys.

I need to know what crime the potential client was arrested for. I also need to know when and where the incident happened. I need to know whether someone is on probation in another case or if the person has prior convictions. After I get that basic information then we can start talking about the facts of the case itself. Since I am an attorney, we can speak confidentially and anything that is said cannot be disclosed to anyone.