No Operator’s License or Driving While License Revoked?

As you might expect, I get all kinds of calls every day. I often get calls about tickets where the potential client says they are charged with “Driving without a license.” That’s a big red flag for me because often what they’re saying isn’t precisely what they mean.

There IS a criminal charge of driving without your driver’s license on you. That’s generally called a “No Operator’s License” ticket, which we shorten to an NOL. It’s not a huge deal and if you bring your valid license to court, it will almost certainly get dismissed. I don’t mind these at all.

There is ALSO a criminal charge for driving while your license is suspended/revoked. This is generally called “Driving While License Revoked” or DWLR. This is a MUCH bigger deal and can, under the wrong circumstances, actually lead to jail time (rare but possible). It’s also generally indicative of a much bigger issue, in that what revoked your license in the first place might be a simple thing to fix, or it might be terribly complicated, but to deal with the current DWLR charge in the best way possible, you should try to fix the underlying revocation if you can. As a general rule in my current practice, I don’t get involved in these.

So if you happen to call me because you have some sort of license charge and I ask you to clarify, this is what I’m trying to get at. These are two different things that are very different to handle; I’m not just being pedantic.

Speaking of pedantic, if I say your license is revoked, but you argue that it’s just suspended, you’re wasting our time. Your license isn’t valid, it’s no good, these are, for purposes of this conversation, the same thing. So don’t be annoying about it.