duistatelaws.com 
The same diagram as a table
| Step | Criminal case — decided by a court | License case — decided by the state licensing agency |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arrest and booking, hour 0 | Notice of suspension served, day 0 |
| 2 | Charge filed by the prosecutor | Deadline to demand a hearing, frequently 7 to 30 days |
| 3 | First court setting, on a date the court picks | Hearing held if the request was filed — the suspension is stayed until the judge rules |
| 4 | One or more pretrial settings | Suspension takes effect automatically with no hearing |
| 5 | Trial, plea or dismissal | — |
| Clock | Weeks to months. No filing deadline runs against the driver. | Counted in days from the notice, and fixed by statute. |
Key takeaways
- There is no federal drunk-driving statute for an ordinary road. The charge, its name, the penalty range and the deadline to save your license are all set by one state’s legislature.
- An arrest opens two proceedings: a criminal charge decided by a court, and an administrative action against your license decided by the state licensing agency.
- Only the license case has a short deadline, it is measured in days, and the court will not start it for you.
- Every figure on this site is quoted from the statute it comes from and carries the date the text was last checked.
Start with your state
DUI law is state law. There is no federal drunk-driving statute that applies on an ordinary road, so the charge you are facing, the name it goes by, the penalty range, and the deadline to save your license are all set by the legislature of one particular state. A guide written for “the United States” is a guide written for nowhere.
Each state page starts from the statute text, quotes the operative language, links to the official legislative site, and states the date the text was last checked. Where a number comes from a court or an agency rather than a statute, we name the agency and the reporting year.
All states we have read, in one table — with each state’s limit, license deadline and prior-offense window side by side. More states are added as their statutes are read, not before.
The deadline almost nobody is told about
When an officer arrests someone for impaired driving and that person either fails a chemical test or refuses one, two separate proceedings begin. Most people only find out about the second one when it is already over.
The first is the criminal case. It is filed by a prosecutor, heard in a court, and it moves at the speed courts move at — weeks, usually months.
The second is administrative. The state licensing agency moves to suspend the driving privilege without waiting for the criminal case to finish, and in most states the driver has a short window, frequently between seven and thirty days, to demand a hearing. Miss it and the suspension takes effect automatically. There is no trial, no jury, and usually no second chance at the deadline. The criminal case can end in a dismissal a year later and the administrative suspension will still have happened.
This is the single most useful thing a general-audience site can tell someone who was arrested last night, and it is the reason every state page on this site leads with the number of days rather than with a definition of intoxication.
Not sure which deadline applies to you?
Enter the ZIP code where the arrest happened and we will start the review with your state’s rules loaded.
What we publish and what we do not
We publish statutory text with citations, penalty ranges taken from those statutes, procedural deadlines, court locations and contact details, and case-volume figures drawn from government reporting. Every number carries the source it came from and the year it describes.
We do not publish attorney rankings, success rates, case results, or reviews. Not because they would be uninteresting, but because we have no way to verify them, and an unverifiable claim on a legal advertising page is worse than no claim at all. Where a competitor would put a star rating, we put a citation.
What you can check for yourself
Every statutory claim on this site links to the official legislature or agency page it came from. If a link goes dead or a statute is amended, the page is wrong until we fix it — so each page carries a “law current as of” date rather than an undated claim of accuracy.
Our full sourcing rules are on the methodology page.
Common questions
Is duistatelaws.com a law firm?
No. duistatelaws.com is an independent publisher. We write state-by-state summaries of DUI and DWI law and we operate a free case-review form. We do not practice law, we do not give legal advice, and we do not represent anyone. When you submit the form, your request goes to attorneys who advertise with us for the state where the arrest happened.
What does it cost to use the case review form?
Nothing. You are never billed by this site. Attorneys pay us a fixed advertising fee for each inquiry we send them. That fee is set in advance and does not change based on whether you hire anyone, what happens in your case, or what an attorney charges you.
Do you choose which attorney is right for me?
No, and we are deliberate about that. We do not rank attorneys, we do not score them, and we do not independently investigate them. Your request is sent to the attorneys listed for that territory. You decide who to talk to and who to hire.
How many attorneys will contact me?
Up to three. That cap is written into the consent language on the form itself, not buried in a policy page, so you can read exactly what you are agreeing to before you agree to it.
Is a DUI the same thing as a DWI?
It depends entirely on the state. In most states the two words describe one offense and only the acronym differs. In a handful of states they are two separate offenses with different penalties, and in Maryland the ordering is the opposite of what most people assume. Our DUI vs DWI guide works through the differences state by state.
Why do you keep saying there are two cases?
Because in most states there are. The criminal charge is decided by a court. Your driving privilege is decided separately by the state licensing agency, on its own timetable, often with a deadline measured in days rather than months. People who only prepare for the court date routinely lose the license case by default before the first hearing.
Ready to have someone look at it?
Same seven questions. Free, and you choose who you speak with.
Your request is ready to send
Here is what happens after you submit:
- Your answers go to attorneys licensed in the state where you were arrested.
- Up to three of them may contact you using the details you gave.
- You decide who, if anyone, you speak with. You are not committed to any of them.
Submitting this request does not create an attorney–client relationship.