Katherine Shipman did an outstanding job in defense of our 21 year old college student son who was arrested for marijuana possession in Montgomery County, TX while driving on I45. His truck was stopped for not having a front license plate displayed properly. The police officer who made the stop requ...ested a search of his car. Why an improperly displayed plate required a full search remains a mystery to me. My son refused to assent to a search, yet the police officer went ahead with the search, and not finding anything, ordered a drug dog search. After 35 minutes or so the drug dog failed to initially detect any drugs. A final search of my son's backpack yielded a discovery of a small (2-3 grams) amount of marijuana and my son was arrested. My wife and I searched for a lawyer in the Conroe area and we were very lucky to discover Katherine Shipman, who, when reviewing our case, indicated we were in a strong position. According to the arresting officer, the probable cause for searching my son's truck against his consent was that he "looked nervous". Videotapes of the arrest scene didn't corroborate this. And my son's refusal to consent to the search request required a reasonable probable cause for going ahead and making the search. At any rate, Ms. Shipman meticulously detailed all of our options, from pleading guilty to deferred adjudication, to fully contesting the charge with a jury trial. She was terrific in laying out all of the pluses and minuses for each of our options. She indicated she would fully support any of our choices and would do her best to get our son the best possible outcome. She was very reassuring, since we were pretty distraught at the time. So, we finally agreed to contest the charge in a jury trial and Ms. Shipman did some great prep work for the trial, rounding up experts to testify on technical aspects of the case. Finally, we were fortunate in that the officer with the drug dog could not testify and the case was dismissed by the prosecutor about 2 months before the beginning of the trial. But through the entire process Ms. Shipman was very responsive to our enquiries and kept us regularly informed on the progress of the case. In retrospect, I can't think how any lawyer could have handled this case better than she did. We're all very grateful to her. Thus, I recommend her to anyone looking for an outstanding criminal defense lawyer.