EUGENE ELLIS, known locally
as "Mr.DUI", is one of the pre-eminent DUI
attorneys in Southern California. With 34 years of legal
experience, more than 30 years of his career has been dedicated
exclusively defending DUI and DMV only cases.
Education | Early Career | Practice
Limited to DUI | Benefits
of Limited Practice
Education
: Mr. Ellis graduated from the
Western State University College of Law in 1975, took the
1976 winter California Bar Exam, and was one of the 37% of first-time
exam takers to pass on the first attempt. He went on to take
post-graduate law courses at the University of Southern California,
University of San Diego, and Hastings University School of
Law. After completing his education in San Diego, where he
has lived most of his adult life, Mr. Ellis has continually upgraded
his skills as a DUI attorney. Please take a minute to look at just a
few of the courses he has taken that are outlined in the Expertise Is Required to Beat
the System section.
Early Career
: Beginning his career with a
two-attorney medical malpractice firm, Mr. Ellis learned the lessons of
David and Goliath. At times facing defense firms with up to
60 lawyers, he learned he could take on difficult cases and beat the
large firms at their own games. Unwilling to give in to the Goliath law
firms, Mr. Ellis often worked around the clock fighting the frequently
bullying tactics used against smaller firms. These experiences cemented
his desire to fight on behalf of the underdog and are used in his
battles against a massive government system designed to prosecute DUI
defendants.
Practice Limited to DUI
: After years of practice, Mr.
Ellis concluded that the attorney who limits his practice to one area
of the law inevitably gains sufficient expertise to have the upper hand
in litigation. In the words of Russell Cromwell: "Find
something, anything, and do it better than anyone else in the world,
and the public will eventually find out about you and beat a path to
your door."
In 1980 Mr. Ellis began the "San Diego Ticket Clinic." After
years of fighting every sort of traffic violation from ordinary traffic
tickets to driving under the influence (DUI) cases, he had the honor to
work for some time with Bill Fielden, a famous DUI and federal criminal
attorney. Together, Mr. Ellis and Mr. Fielden were extremely
aggressive attorneys, not only in their methods of practicing law, but
also in their ability to "swim upstream" and fight unpopular causes
which they felt were just. In 1986, after building a successful
practice, Mr. Ellis decided that he would further limit his practice to
handling only DUIs.
In 1986, enter Mitchell Mehdy, a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, aggressive
young attorney who was tired of working with big law firms where you
are just a number and who wanted an area of specialization and a chance
to make a name for himself. Mitchell was the ideal candidate to take
over the traffic ticket and DMV part of the then "San Diego Ticket
Clinic" and so was born an association that has endured through the
years until today. In that division of labors Mitchell Mehdy does all
the traffic tickets, DMV hearings, traffic warrants and drivers license
related offenses other than DUI, which Mr. Ellis limits his practice
to. Mr. Mehdy then became "Mr. Ticket" under license from Mr. Ellis and
Mr. Ellis became "Mr. DUI", each limiting their practices to their
respective areas.
Benefits
of Limited Practices to the Clients
When you do one thing to the exclusion of anything else, year after
year, you obtain a cutting edge that is hard or impossible for other
attorneys not so fortunate in being able to limit their practice to
achieve. That is common sense and it is especially true of Medicine or
Law because they are so complex. Of all the criminal law cases DUI
lends itself especially well to limited practice because it is more
complex than any other type of criminal case, except the very complex
murder and rape felony complex of crimes. The metabolism of alcohol in
the human body causes a person, for example, to be guilty of DUI one
hour after his last drink, but not guilty twenty minutes after his last
drink when he was stopped by an officer who saw him leaving a
bar. DUI is a nightmare combination of science, law and
politics all trying to live comfortably in one bed together.
The result is "legal chaos". Only the attorney that limits
his practice to DUI stands a chance of understanding all the complex
issues and of raising the best defense in most DUI cases. DMV hearings
equally are tough nuts to crack for the average attorney, and in San
Diego, with no way to get around without a license, it can mean the
loss of a job or even a twenty year career.
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