admin January 29th, 2010
Crowds of driving locals and tourists seen to create ‘perfect storm’ for business
BY BOB SHEMELIGIAN
As local police departments step up traffic enforcement on Southern Nevada’s roadways, nearly a dozen Las Vegas law firms vie for their share of the ever-growing businesses of ticket defense.
They include Ticket Busters, Ticket Terminator, Ticket Doctor and Ticket Eliminators — to name a few.
“I’ve heard of Ticket Ninja and Ticket King,” said Richard Harris, owner of Ticket Busters. “It seems like everyone in Southern Nevada is a ticket lawyer. We’re the ticket law firm capital of the world.”
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MIKE STOTTS | LAS VEGAS BUSINESS PRESS
Lawyer Richard Harris stands in his Las Vegas firm Nov. 30. He owns Ticket Busters, a business that pleads for deals in court to save clients time, money and driver’s license points. |
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Despite the cute names, humorous advertising campaigns, easy-to-remember phone numbers and catchy slogans like the mean looking traffic cop saying, “You don’t want to see me in court,” ticket attorneys are serious about business.
“With 2 million people who live in a 24-hour drinking town and drive on surface streets that are big wide freeways, and you add 30 million tourists a year, it gives us a perfect storm,” Harris said.
Records show that in fiscal 2009, the 12-month period ended in June, Las Vegas Justice Court collected nearly $36 million in ticket revenue for violations that occurred in unincorporated Las Vegas, the area generally south of Sahara Avenue.
Revenue for fiscal 2010 is projected to approach $42.5 million.
Harris bought Ticket Busters in April 2007 from attorney Adam Stokes, who now operates Half Price Lawyers. The attorney, who also operates Richard Harris Law Firm and The Defenders, explained that some have the misconception that ticket attorneys are in the business of trying to “fix” tickets. Rather, these attorneys provide a service. They plead for the deals they can get, often saving their clients time, money and driver’s license points.
Not everyone agrees.
In a recent Internet “Ripoff Report,” a Las Vegas woman named Shawna wrote that although Ticket Busters was able to get points removed from her husband’s driving record following a traffic ticket, the husband was required to attend traffic school “which would have removed the points for us anyway!”
Harris counters this claim with several laudatory testimonials on his company’s Web site, ticketbusters.com. He added that all customers of Ticket Busters save time, and some save money and points. In other words — as it is in criminal cases — it’s not up to the attorney to decide the sentence, it’s up to the courts.
“We as professionals in a traffic-related law firm are not going to guarantee any result,” Harris explained. “We handle tickets as any professional would — expeditiously. We save a lot of time, and in many cases our clients receive reduced fines, and no traffic school or points.”
Like other ticket lawyers, Harris or other attorneys at his firm typically attend special sessions before a judge and try to get the best deal they can for their clients. It’s not unusual for these attorneys to try to obtain reduced charges on several tickets at a time. In other words, they plea bargain.
“Many of these violations are in packages,” Harris said. “Some motorists could be hit with several citations. They could include improper lane change, no insurance, signals — I remember one client had seven. When we have this many, we can negotiate, and we do a good job.”
Stokes understands this.
“I’ll go (before the judge) with a stack of 500 tickets and try to get the best deal I can for my clients,” Stokes said. “If I can’t, then I’ll ask the judge to set all 500 cases for trial,”
Stokes, who boasts that he charges only $50 to handle a traffic citation, explained it’s not a matter of threatening a judge with clogging his calendar. Ticket defense goes to the heart of the judicial system — meaning that every defendant, no matter how minor the charge, has a right to an attorney and a right to his day in court.
The attorney also said he’s vigilant about trying to remove points from his clients’ driving records to help keep the clients’ auto insurance rates down.
“I don’t know why the state has an interest in sharing driver’s license information with insurance companies,” said Stokes, who holds master’s of business administration and law degrees from Tulane University.
A competitor to Ticket Busters and Half Price Lawyers is Ticket Terminators, which former insurance agent Kirk Helmick runs from a pink office building at the corner of Flamingo Road and Rainbow Boulevard.
Helmick, a native of Elkins, couldn’t be reached for comment.
Two years ago, he told the Elkins-based Inter-Mountain newspaper that he started the business several years ago after he began selling insurance in Las Vegas. Helmick explained that sometimes his insurance customers would have traffic tickets along with personal injury claims and local attorneys were hired to represent the clients.
“The relationship was working and we had a trade-off,” said Helmick, adding that he would refer personal injury cases to the lawyers who were already handling the tickets. “I decided that I was going to take it to another level.”
Helmick told the Inter-Mountain newspaper he has three attorneys working for him and he does all the marketing. He also said he has a traffic school.
Harris also offers his clients a traffic school. He notes that his online traffic school, which does business as Traffic School Busters, is free. The official name of the online school is gototrafficschool.com.
“There are some courts where traffic school is required if the client wants to remove the points,” Harris said. “And we offer traffic school for free.”
Any attorney would argue that the best way to avoid fines, points and traffic school is to avoid the ticket in the first place.
A few weeks ago, Harris was stopped by a Henderson police officer over a minor traffic violation.
“I got a warning when I told him I owned Ticket Busters,” Harris said.
Bob Shemeligian is a local freelance writer. Send questions or comments
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