Your summons, when it arrives, will probably require you to attend the court at 10am. That is the usual start time for all magistrates courts. Your solicitor will have no more idea than you how many cases are to be dealt with before yours. You may be first up or you may be last. You will not know until the Court Usher tells you or you read the list pinned to the court entrance. Your solicitor, rather like a taxi, will turn on his meter as he leaves his office and not switch it off again until he gets back behind his desk. If your case is not called until the afternoon he will also charge for his lunch. He will bill you for every minute of the day spent on your case.
The court have no option other than to impose a 12 month ban (first offence, not a long way over the limit etc means they will not be looking to increase that). You will get the option to speak in your own mitigation or to make a statement to the court, it will be more impressive coming from you than from someone who the court knows is paid to lie. They will offer you a reduction of three months on the ban if you agree to attend the, tedious and not very pleasant but soon over, course. You will, of course, accept this option. They will impose a fine. You can hardly plead poverty but you can ask for time to pay if you feel you need to. The usher will guide you to where you have to stand and indicate to you when you may leave. End of your day out.
I am happy to accompany you or I am sure Growler would do so. We don't charge.
Cases that WILL be heard before you will involve anyone being held in custody either by the police overnight or being brought in by prison service vans. After that it is at the whim of the court how they deal with the cases due to be heard that day. Usually the court manager will post the list before the doors open, some do it by alphabetical order, others by their estimate of how long it will take the bench to deal with each case.
