Additional Documentation to Submit

Did you complete a counseling or rehab program, even if it was court ordered? Chances are you did, and it absolutely cannot hurt to submit that document as evidence at your hearing. Of course, you want your attorney to hand in a copy, because whatever you submit is kept by the Secretary of State in it’s file.

AA sign in sheets are golden. As far as that goes, the more the better.

Those examples seem obvious, but what about a report card if you’re in school or taking some kind of vocational training? I have submitted report cards and then asked my Client if he or she would have been able to complete, much less get a good grade in any such program had they not quit drinking. I use their answer as proof of their Sobriety and point to their accomplishments as a reward of sorts for having made such a huge lifestyle change. I once had a client submit a report card that he got in a two-year health care vocational training program. His rather proud testimony was that he would NEVER have been able to handle such a program when he had been drinking, and that he had invested way too much time and money in himself to blow the whole thing by going back to drinking and losing all the hard work he had put into it.

Pay stubs showing a raise can help your case if you can truthfully testify that since you have quit drinking, you have become a better and more valued employee.

There really is no limit to what you can submit. I will help you decide what should be submitted, and how to characterize it. Sometimes I file these additional documents at the start of the case, other times I present them for the first time at the Hearing. You do not win a case by merely submitting a pile of evidence. It must all tie together in a common theme. To that end, you do not need to prove the same thing twice, and we certainly want to avoid is a situation where we pretty much had the case won before the Hearing, but then loaded up the Hearing Officer with so much additional documentation that he or she has to take additional time to go through it.

I may sound like a broken record, but it’s my job to go over everything in your case with you and help decide what’s good and what’s not, and what gets submitted, and when, and what’s held back.