 A lot of people ask me, what is a summons? I received a summons, what does that mean? Well it means that you're required by law to show up to court to answer for either a charge that a prosecutor has filed on a direct complaint, sometimes called a long form, a ticket that an officer gave you, or what's called a grand jury indictment. That means a secret grand jury convened, usually on the more serious cases, and they found that there's probable cause to charge you with a crime. Now normally they'll issue a warrant directly and they'll just come and pick you up and there'll be a bond set, but if you do get a summons, this means they did not issue a warrant and it means you can voluntarily come in and address the judge and at that time they'll determine your release conditions. You do not wanna walk in alone if you've received a summons. You wanna have a lawyer who knows what they're doing. When people have a summons and they hire us, we go in with them and almost every single time we're able to get them released on their own recognizance or on pre-trial services release at worst. The next step up is a bond and that's problematic because a bond costs you money and you don't wanna give 10% of a bond amount to a bondsman that you'll never see again. So sometimes we've had people where a summons goes out and or a grand jury warrant has gone out with a $100,000 bond, which they'd have to pay $10,000 to a bondsman and we're able at the very first court date get that to the release on their own recognizance or pre-trial services, thereby saving them $10,000 just by showing up. So if you've received a summons, no matter what it's for, contact us immediately so we can help you out.