Should I hire a lawyer for arraignment?

Absolutely, that is – unless you can’t afford one and expect to be appointed a court-appointed attorney, which typically happens during arraignment. In fact, if you manage to hire an attorney before arraignment, in some cases, your lawyer can have the charges dismissed before you are even brought before a judge. How? Well, typically, your case will first go through an intake prosecutor, who will determine the merits of the case. If you can get a lawyer to approach the intake prosecutor before he or she has made a decision to prosecutor, a lawyer may be able to convince the intake prosecutor to dismiss the charges. It’s best for a lawyer to approach the intake prosecutor early on, before the prosecutor’s office has put effort into the case, because once efforts have been made, a prosecutor’s office will probably want to justify the time worked with some kind of conviction. Approaching the intake officer early also gives prosecutors an opportunity to dismiss a weak case in advance, which may be to the benefit of the prosecutor’s office where the court docket is already overcrowded.