July 11, 2026

DUI/DWI Defense Intake Forms: What Your Form Needs to Capture

Here is how most DUI intakes go wrong. The client sits down, tells you they got pulled over Friday night, blew a .11, and have a court date in three weeks. You take down the basics — name, date of arrest, charge, court — and schedule a follow-up to review the discovery. Two weeks later, you get the police report and find out your client holds a commercial driver's license, had a prior wet reckless plea in another state four years ago, and the breath test was administered seven minutes after the stop with no documented observation period. Any one of those facts should have shaped your defense strategy from day one, but you did not ask about them because your intake form did not prompt you to.

DUI defense lives and dies on details, and the details fade fast. Your client's memory of the stop, the field tests, and the arrest will be sharper at the first meeting than it will ever be again. A DUI/DWI defense intake form built for this practice area forces the right questions at the right time, so nothing slips through.

The Stop and Arrest

Every DUI defense starts with probable cause. If the officer did not have a lawful reason to stop the vehicle, everything that followed — the field sobriety tests, the breath test, the arrest — is fruit of an unlawful stop. Your intake form needs a dedicated section for the circumstances that led to the encounter.

Was this a traffic stop? If so, what was the stated violation — speeding, weaving, crossing the fog line, a broken taillight? Weaving within the lane is not the same as crossing lane markers, and the distinction matters in a suppression motion. Was it a DUI checkpoint? Checkpoints have their own constitutional requirements: pre-announcement, neutral stopping criteria, supervisory presence. Was the client involved in an accident? If so, was the client actually observed driving, or did officers arrive after the fact and find the client near the vehicle?

Capture the time of the stop, the location, the lighting and weather conditions, and the name and badge number of the arresting officer. Capture whether there were passengers in the vehicle and what the officer said during the initial contact. All of this matters, and your client will remember more of it now than they will in a month.

Field Sobriety Tests

The three standardized field sobriety tests — Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus, Walk-and-Turn, and One-Leg Stand — are only as reliable as their administration. NHTSA has published specific protocols for each test, and officers deviate from those protocols constantly. Your intake form should capture each test separately because the details of administration are where suppression and weight-of-evidence arguments live.

For the HGN test: did the officer use a stimulus? Did they check for equal pupil size and resting nystagmus first? Did they hold the stimulus at the correct distance? How many passes per eye? Most clients will not know the technical terms, but they can tell you what the officer did with their hands and how long it took.

For the Walk-and-Turn: where was it performed? On a painted line, a curb, or an imaginary line in a gravel parking lot? What was your client wearing on their feet? Did the officer demonstrate the test? How many steps were requested? NHTSA says nine heel-to-toe, but officers regularly ask for different numbers.

For the One-Leg Stand: which foot, how long, what was the surface like? A client with a bad knee, a recent surgery, or who is 60 years old has a very different baseline than a healthy 25-year-old, and your form should capture physical limitations that affect test performance.

Also note whether the officer administered any non-standardized tests — finger-to-nose, alphabet recitation, counting backwards. These carry less evidentiary weight, but officers use them and prosecutors present them. Get the details now.

Breath Test, Blood Draw, or Refusal

This is the section that drives most DUI defenses. The BAC number is important, but the circumstances around how that number was obtained often matter more.

For breath tests, capture the device model if your client knows it (Intoxilyzer, Draeger, DataMaster — each has its own maintenance schedule and known error rates). Capture the time of the test relative to the time of the stop. Was a 15- or 20-minute observation period conducted before the test? During that observation period, did your client burp, belch, or regurgitate? Residual mouth alcohol from a recent belch can spike a breath reading by a significant margin, and the observation period exists specifically to guard against that. If the officer did not observe, or the observation period was too short, you have a suppression argument.

For blood draws, the issues shift to chain of custody and the Fourth Amendment. Who drew the blood — a phlebotomist, a nurse, the officer? Where was the draw performed? Did the officer obtain a warrant, or did your client consent? If there was a warrant, how long elapsed between the arrest and the warrant application? Post-McNeely, warrantless blood draws without exigent circumstances face serious constitutional challenges. If your client consented, were they told they had the right to refuse?

For refusals, your form needs to capture the refusal consequences. In most states, refusing a breath or blood test triggers an automatic administrative license suspension — often longer than the suspension for a failed test. Did the officer read the implied consent advisory? Did the officer explain the specific penalties for refusal? What exactly did your client say? "I want to call my lawyer" is treated differently from "no" in many jurisdictions.

Prior DUI/DWI History

A first-offense DUI is a misdemeanor everywhere. A second or third within the look-back window can be a felony with mandatory jail time, and look-back periods vary wildly by state — five years in some places, ten in others, lifetime in a few. Your form cannot just ask "any prior DUIs." It needs to ask specifically and capture every prior arrest and disposition, in every state, going back at least ten years.

Ask about wet reckless pleas, deferred adjudications, diversion programs, and ARD (accelerated rehabilitative disposition) completions. In many states, a completed diversion still counts as a prior offense for enhancement purposes. Your client may not volunteer a wet reckless from seven years ago in another state unless you ask directly. A prior that triggers felony enhancement changes the entire case — the plea offer, the sentencing exposure, and the client's willingness to go to trial.

License Status and CDL

Capture your client's current license status: valid, suspended, restricted, revoked, or expired. If it is already suspended from a prior offense, the new arrest may carry an additional charge for driving on a suspended license, which in some states is a separate criminal offense with its own penalties.

Commercial driver's license holders are a special case that many criminal defense attorneys handle without fully appreciating the consequences. A CDL holder faces a lower BAC threshold — 0.04% in a commercial vehicle under federal regulations. But the part that trips people up is this: a DUI conviction in a personal vehicle still triggers a one-year CDL disqualification for a first offense and a lifetime disqualification for a second. For a truck driver, a delivery driver, a bus driver, a DUI conviction is a career-ending event. Your intake form needs a clear CDL field because it changes everything about how you negotiate the case. A client who drives a desk can accept a plea. A client who drives for a living may need to go to trial.

Vehicle and Passenger Information

Capture the vehicle make, model, year, plate number, and whether your client owns it. If the vehicle was towed, note the impound lot. If there were passengers, get their names and contact information — they are potential witnesses to the stop, the field sobriety tests, and your client's condition and behavior. Passengers can testify about how much your client had to drink, how they were driving, and how the officer conducted the stop. Their account may differ from the officer's report, and you want to know that before you decide on strategy.

Court Date, Jurisdiction, and Bail

Note the court, the jurisdiction, the arraignment date, and any other scheduled dates. If the case is in municipal court versus superior court, that affects procedure and sentencing exposure. Capture whether your client posted bail or was released on their own recognizance, whether there are conditions of release (no drinking, no driving, ignition interlock), and whether the client has complied with those conditions. A violation of pretrial release conditions is a separate problem that can result in bail revocation.

If the client also has a pending DMV or MVC administrative hearing for license suspension — which is a separate proceeding from the criminal case in most states — capture that hearing date and whether the client has requested it. Administrative suspension hearings have tight deadlines, sometimes as short as 10 days from the date of arrest, and missing the request window means the suspension goes into effect automatically.

Why This Matters

You can handle DUI cases with a blank legal pad and a good memory. Plenty of attorneys do. But you will miss things. The CDL you did not ask about. The prior wet reckless in another state. The breath test given without an observation period. The fact that the walk-and-turn was performed on loose gravel in the rain. These are defense arguments that exist whether or not you discover them, and a structured intake form is what makes sure you discover them at the first meeting instead of the week before trial.

If you handle DUI work as part of a broader criminal defense practice, pair this with the general criminal defense intake form for non-DUI matters and the traffic violations intake form for the lower-level motor vehicle cases that often come through the same door. The full catalog of legal intake forms covers 38 practice areas.