Getting ready to meet your defence lawyer
The essentials
- Depending on what your lawyer asks for: your identity documents, every document connected to the events, the relevant communications, and, if the lawyer finds them useful, proof of employment or of ties to the community.
- A dated timeline of the facts, the witnesses with a word about what they saw, the numbered exhibits preserved with their dates.
- Every statement in this guide is backed by an official source.
In short, from this page. Every statement is sourced below.
Put your facts in writing, free. Writing down your version of events early, while your memory is fresh, keeping your documents and preparing your questions for your lawyer: the tool is there to document, never to advise.
Open the application Up to 3 cases, no credit card · see the plans
In criminal matters, unlike family court, almost everyone has a lawyer : legal aid covers criminal defence broadly. Your job, before meeting them, is not to prepare a defence (that is theirs), but to give them clean raw material. That is exactly what Preuve en main does.
Gathering, in general
Depending on what your lawyer asks for: your identity documents, every document connected to the events, the relevant communications, and, if the lawyer finds them useful, proof of employment or of ties to the community. Gather broadly and honestly: the lawyer will do the sorting.
Organizing, to save time
A dated timeline of the facts, the witnesses with a word about what they saw, the numbered exhibits preserved with their dates. Two hours reviewing a clean file are worth more (and cost less) than ten hours of sorting.
The line not to cross
You document facts. You do not build a version and you do not rehearse a story. It is a matter of integrity, and it is also what makes a file credible.
In the app: the "Other" case type lets you build a timeline, a dated and fingerprinted evidence vault, and then a clean "professional file" export to hand to your lawyer. Open the application.
Official sources (consulted July 18, 2026)
Every statement in this guide is backed by an official source. How we verify and correct.
- Commission des services juridiques du Québec (legal aid), eligibility and coverage of criminal defence
- Preuve en main, Integrity methodology and the app
Found an error in this guide? Report it: corrected within 72 hours, and the correction log is public.
Reminder: this is general information; it is not information for anyone in particular. For advice on your situation: legal aid (eligibility based on income), a community justice centre, Juripop, or the Barreau referral service.