Mac and Co Lawyers is a criminal law firm that can go in to battle for you. We are particularly interested in helping those who are marginalised in the community. We accept grants of legal aid which means if you are eligible for legal aid, you can ask us to act for you and the Legal Services Commission will pay us a (set) fee to do so. Jessie MacGillivray, principal lawyer at Mac and Co Lawyers is a member of the Complex Criminal Law Panel of the Legal Services Commission.
If you are not eligible for legal aid there may still be ways for us to assist you even if you do not have a high income. We will negotiate a fair price for us to work with you.
People often think lawyers are expensive. At Mac and Co we will explain to you the value we think we offer our clients and why we charge what we charge.
Apart from actually attending court with our clients, a lot of behind the scenes work goes into our high quality service. No two cases are the same. Behind the scenes work usually involves:
- reading, listening to or watching evidence in your case and developing a case strategy from there.
- writing or speaking to the prosecutor.
- reading precedents (cases with similar facts to yours) so we can make the most of them and hopefully give you an advantage either in sentencing options or in fighting the charge. It is this part that usually takes the most time and makes the difference between getting charges dropped before trial and someone pleading guilty to something they shouldn’t.
- speaking to witnesses, researching things like the crime scene or other forensic evidence such as DNA and drug analysis.
Occasionally we have cases which are resolved in just one court appearance. We find these cases are often able to be conducted by us on a ‘fixed fee’ basis, which means a one-off payment which covers the whole case.
We are pleased to offer our clients a first free interview. If you are worried about legal costs please do not hesitate to contact Jessie on 0413 939 236 to chat about what is usually involved.