In criminal cases, pace is everything. The sooner your lawyer finds out precisely what occurred, the sooner specific investigative and strategic decisions can be made for your protection. An appropriate defensive course of action undertaken early on can often wrest "control of the case" from the prosecution and level the playing field for you.
The quality you can bring to this mix is the truth: tell your lawyer all of it--the best, the worst and the ugliest. The time it takes your lawyer to determine everything the State (or Government) might have in its file against you is lost time--that neither you nor your lawyer can recover. The key is to shorten the learning curve for your lawyer to get command of the facts. The lawyer who knows
