Most Washington impaired driving cases resolve one of three ways, and the choice between them is usually made months before trial, at a table in a hallway, with a prosecutor who has read the police report and a defense attorney who has read the same report plus the breath test maintenance records. A careful reader compares the three endings on the same axes the lawyer is quietly weighing: what it costs in fees and fines, how many years it binds you, and what it leaves on a record an employer or a licensing board can pull. Those three answers rarely point the same direction.
One: deferred prosecution, cheap in fees and expensive in years
A deferred prosecution under Washington's statute is not a dismissal you buy; it is a trade. You stipulate that the police report is accurate, waive the jury trial, submit an evaluation from a state-approved agency finding chemical dependency or a qualifying condition, and enter two years of outpatient treatment inside a five-year supervision period. Complete it and the charge is dismissed at the end. Fail it, and the court enters a conviction on the facts you already stipulated to, with no trial available. You get one in a lifetime, which is the part a careful reader underlines.
The attorney fee is often the lowest of the three because there is no motion practice and no trial, but the treatment, monitoring, ignition interlock and court costs run across five years. Ask what the total looks like in year three, not month two.
Two: an amended charge, and what it does not erase
The common landing spot is negligent driving in the first degree, sometimes reckless driving, and the difference from a DUI conviction is real. The mandatory jail floor disappears, the fine drops, the probation period is usually shorter, and the word on the judgment is not the word that triggers most employer screening. That is a substantial trade, and it is why the majority of contested cases end here rather than at trial.
What it does not do deserves equal attention. Under Washington law an amended charge that started as an impaired driving allegation still counts as a prior offense if there is a second arrest inside seven years, which changes every mandatory minimum next time. It does not undo the Department of Licensing action, which runs on its own schedule and its own evidence. It may not satisfy a commercial license disqualification, a professional board reporting duty, or an immigration consequence. Ask specifically which of those apply to you before agreeing.
Three: a conviction, and the floors written into the statute
If the case is going to end in a plea to the original charge, the sentencing is largely arithmetic. The statute sets a minimum of twenty-four consecutive hours in jail or a fixed alternative stretch of electronic home monitoring for a first offense below the aggravated breath threshold, with a higher floor above it or on a refusal, plus a fine minimum before assessments, five years of probation, and an ignition interlock requirement tied to the license rather than the case. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration tracks impaired driving countermeasures nationally, and interlock is the one Washington leans on hardest.
The point of knowing the floors precisely is that they tell you what a negotiated outcome is actually worth in dollars and days, which is the only honest way to price an attorney's fee against it.
Four: when the trial fee earns its keep
Trial is the most expensive ending and the only one that can produce an acquittal. It is worth the added fee when there is an identifiable evidentiary problem rather than a general hope: a stop without articulable suspicion, an expansion of the stop past its lawful scope, a blood draw with a warrant defect, a breath test with a maintenance or observation-period gap, or field sobriety testing administered off protocol. Those are motion issues first, and a suppressed test usually changes the offer before a jury is ever seated.
Ask the lawyer to name the motion, not the odds. A quote that includes a suppression hearing and a separate trial fee is telling you where the work sits, and comparing two quotes at that level of detail is more informative than comparing two totals.
The comparison worth making is not which ending sounds best but which one you can still live inside at year four, when the fee is long paid and the obligation is not.