I’m being charged with a misdemeanor. Is there any reason to worry about my career?

If you’re being charged with a misdemeanor there’s every reason to be worried about your career. You’re being charged with a crime whether it’s classified as a felony or misdemeanor. Also in South Carolina, certain misdemeanors would be considered felonies in federal court. They also would be considered felonies in other states.

Generally speaking, a misdemeanor is something that carries one year or less and so that’s the basic classification. It’s still a criminal record though; it’s still visible, it’s still accessible to the public and it’s something that you would have to explain. They can be very harmful in terms of people’s careers. If you have a career that you care about certainly the best policy is to take every step possible to make sure that you don’t suffer a conviction.

We are called, it seems like, every week by someone who pled guilty to a misdemeanor a few years ago and now is creating a greater harm; there’s a collateral consequence that they’re suffering and they come in and they ask us to try to go back and reopen it and try to have it vacated. Certainly the better practice is to deal with it when it occurs and it’s a lot easier to deal with than as opposed to after the conviction. So that’s something that you definitely want to be careful about and take all of the right steps in the beginning so that you don’t regret that later.