The main reason that you don’t want to just plead quickly is first, it doesn’t give an attorney anytime to negotiate the case for you. If you want to resolve the criminal case in a plea agreement, then an attorney can come in and try to negotiate a deal that’s going to work better for you than the one that the prosecutor is offering you from the outset. Many times, they have in their offers a little wiggle room built in just for the negotiation process. So if you are just taking the first thing that comes across your desk, so to speak, then you may not be getting the best deal that you could get.
The other issue comes from the fact that there may have been something wrong with your case—there may be something the police did wrong, there may be some action by police that an attorney can identify that can make your case resolve without you being convicted or even result in your case being dismissed. There are motions that could be filed based, perhaps, on how the officer conducted the traffic stop, or how evidence was gathered. You won’t know that if you just take the first deal that’s offered, instead of getting time to get an attorney, who can get the police reports and go through all the evidence and see if maybe there are other ways that the case can be resolved.