How to approach plea-bargain negotiations: A guide for new lawyers

While plea negotiations should be part of every criminal defence case, law schools provide only an academic sense of how they’re conducted, and offer little practical guidance.

”For someone who is stepping into the criminal law field, this is an important consideration and something we’re not taught in school,” says Dostaler. “In every case, you have to talk with the Crown to see if you can resolve the matter,” she tells AdvocateDaily.com. "Even if there’s a stalemate, and the client says ‘I didn’t do it,’ and it needs to go to trial, we still have to be able to sit down with the Crown and say this is why it’s going to trial, these are the issues, and this is what’s going to happen.”