A driver picks up an OWI on a Saturday night in Kent County. By Tuesday he has decided the smart move is to take whatever the prosecutor offers, pay the fine, and put it behind him. He is thinking about the next six months. He is not thinking about 2033, when the second charge he does not yet know he will face becomes permanently unerasable because of the plea he entered this week.
That is the argument almost nobody in Michigan legal marketing is making, and it is unusually well suited to a firm that handles both criminal defense and drunk driving cases — because in Michigan the same statute governs both, and it is stingier than most people assume.
Clean Slate sorted convictions into tiers of permanence
Michigan's 2020 Clean Slate package, effective April 11, 2021, is usually described as an expansion, and it was. But the same laws drew hard lines around what can never be removed, and those lines fall directly across the charges a defense or traffic practice sees every week.
MCL 780.621c lists convictions that may not be set aside at all. Among them: any felony punishable by life imprisonment, or an attempt at one. Felony domestic violence where the person already has a misdemeanor domestic violence conviction. Several child abuse and criminal sexual conduct offenses. And three traffic categories — any traffic offense that causes injury or death; any traffic offense committed by a driver with a commercial endorsement while operating a commercial vehicle; and operating while intoxicated, subject to a single exception.
Above that permanent floor sit numerical caps most defendants have never heard of. A person can petition to set aside no more than three felonies total (MCL 780.621(1)(a)). No more than two assaultive crimes may be set aside in a lifetime (MCL 780.621(1)(b)). For a felony punishable by more than ten years, no more than one such conviction for the same offense may ever be cleared (MCL 780.621(1)(c)).
So Michigan does not have one expungement rule. It has a ladder, and every conviction a client accepts moves them down a rung.
For drunk driving, the math is brutally simple
The OWI exception is the narrowest provision in the statute. One first-violation OWI may be set aside — once, ever, and only on application, because a first OWI "is not eligible for and shall not be set aside without application." The automatic process will never reach it. The petition requires a five-year wait after the last of sentencing, discharge from probation or parole, or release (MCL 780.621d(2)), a clean record in the interim, a Michigan State Police report before the court may act, and a hearing at which the Attorney General or prosecutor may contest it. The court must find the request "consistent with the public welfare," and the statute says plainly that setting aside a conviction is "a privilege and conditional and is not a right" (MCL 780.621d(14)).
Which means a second OWI is permanent. Not slow — permanent. And if the first one was resolved as a plea to something that caused injury, it was never eligible in the first place.
A newly charged driver almost never knows this. He knows the fine, the license consequence, and roughly what his insurance will do. The part that will still be following him in fifteen years is the part nobody has explained.
The quieter traps on the criminal side
The same reasoning runs through a general defense practice, with a few wrinkles worth building copy around.
MCL 780.621b(1) treats multiple offenses arising from a single transaction within 24 hours as one conviction for eligibility purposes — but that consolidation does not apply if any of the offenses is assaultive, involves a dangerous weapon, or carries a maximum of ten or more years. So how a single night gets charged and resolved can be the difference between one conviction on the ladder and three.
Intervening convictions matter too. A court may only grant a petition if the applicant has not been convicted of any offense during the applicable waiting period (MCL 780.621d(4)(c)). Safe & Just Michigan's five-year Clean Slate report notes that courts have split on this: a minority treat any intervening conviction as a permanent bar, while most restart the clock. A client who picks up something minor in year four of a five-year wait may have quietly reset, or ended, a process they did not know was running.
And a set-aside is not an erasure for every purpose. Under MCL 780.622(9), a conviction that has been set aside may still be counted for habitual offender sentencing.
None of this is exotic. It is all in the statute. It is simply not information that reaches people while they still have a decision to make.
Why this works as outreach and not just as a client conversation
Someone facing a new charge in Michigan is shopping quickly and comparing firms that look interchangeable. Most outreach in this category says a version of the same three things: aggressive defense, free consultation, decades of experience. It is all about the firm.
The permanence argument is about the reader, and it answers the question they are actually asking themselves, which is usually some form of how long is this going to follow me. Telling a Michigan defendant that a first OWI is the only drunk driving conviction the state will ever clear, once, after five years, and only if a judge agrees — that is specific, verifiable, and immediately relevant to whether they should take the first offer on the table.
It also reframes the fee. A client weighing a retainer against a fine is comparing two numbers. A client who understands that the plea determines what can ever be removed is comparing a fee against a permanent record, which is a different comparison.
A caution on tone: this material can be pushed into fear copy very easily, and it should not be. There is real distress behind a drunk driving arrest, sometimes real addiction, and a message built on shame converts badly and deserves to. State what the statute does and let the reader draw the conclusion. Plain and factual outperforms alarmed here.
One campaign, both halves of the practice
The practical advantage for a firm doing criminal defense and serious traffic and OWI work is that this is a single message. The same statutory framework covers the OWI prospect and the assault or felony prospect; only the example changes. You are not running two disconnected campaigns with two different value propositions.
What matters is reaching those people while the case is live and the decision is still open. CaseHunter's leads are individuals who need an attorney at that moment, matched to your practice areas and the counties you actually cover — not a broad list of Michigan adults who might someday.
Because these prospects decide fast, repetition inside a short window does the work. Direct mail lands with weight and gets kept; a targeted email to the same qualified individuals a few days later arrives while they are still comparing options; social campaigns keep the firm familiar when they finally pick up the phone. Same people, three formats, one argument.
Let's build your Michigan program
We work with firms across Michigan that want to reach people who need a defense attorney right now, in the window where hiring one still changes the outcome. If that is the kind of pipeline you are after, reach us at 703-755-0455 or info@casehunter.com and we will map out unique leads plus direct mail, email, and social media campaigns built around your practice areas.
By CaseHunter