OVERCOME your conviction. With Coontz Law.
We do criminal appeals throughout Michigan (and beyond)
The system gets it wrong more often than it should. And more often than a lot of people would care to admit.
At Coontz Law, we’re here to do something about that. We like to make change, both big and small. Whether you or your loved one were sentenced too harshly or were wrongfully convicted in the first place, we want to do something about that. And maybe together, we can help some other people not have to endure what you’re going through.
We gave up trial work so we could strive to become the best damn criminal appeals law firm in the State of Michigan.
At Coontz Law, we used to do a lot of criminal-defense trial work with some appeals sprinkled in. That’s hard to do because it takes two very different skill sets to be a great trial attorney and a great appellate attorney. We had to choose, and we chose appeals. Or maybe appeals chose us. Because even though we were really good at defending the accused at trial, our skills are even better suited for the appellate process.
So what skills do we bring to the table? We’re really good at taking a deep dive on our cases, which means we need to handle fewer of them. Again, that was hard to do with our trial work. We’re also, we think, some of the best criminal-defense-focused research-and-writing attorneys. Appeals judges read boring, drab legal briefs all the time. We can give them something better. And in doing so, we can make the criminal-legal system a little less unjust one brief at a time.
Our criminal appeals process
01
Case File: Assemble!
Our team gets those trial or plea records assembled, organized, and ready for the lawyers to dig in.
02
Set the Course
Your lawyer(s) will identify the key issues in your case and recommend the course of action that gives us the best chance of success.
03
Drafting the Brief
Your lawyer(s) will take all those records and distill them to somewhere between 10-50(ish) pages of top-notch legal argument. And trust us, we take this stuff seriously.
04
Oral Arguments
This is our chance to take your entire case (your whole life, really), and deliver the most compelling version of it in a 15-minute time block where judges will constantly interrupt us with questions about the case. Don’t worry, this is the sort of pressure we thrive on.
05
After the Decision
Good or bad, we’ll let you know what the court decides. And then we’ll tell you what we can and should do about it. That could mean leaving things alone, or it could mean taking it to a higher court. That’s ultimately your call.
06
Watching for Updates
At heart, we’re law nerds here. We listen to Supreme Court oral arguments for fun. We jump into the latest legal opinions with gusto. Sometimes that means we might have a new avenue for success based on a change in the law in another case. If we think your case has new life, we’ll let you know.
Ready to get that conviction overturned?
If you didn’t get a fair shake at the trial court, then we’re here to help you get a second chance (and send a message to the trial court in the process). What do you say?