How to Choose a Personal Injury Lawyer
Personal injury injury lawyers, often called plaintiffs’ injury lawyers, are those injury lawyers who represent people who are injured in accidents or suffer personal injuries caused by others. On the other side of the table are defense injury lawyers, hired to represent tortfeasors the people who cause accidents. Many people assume that the term “defense injury lawyer” refers to a injury lawyer who represents criminals; typically, however, these are specifically called “criminal defense injury lawyers.”
The injury lawyers that we usually refer to as “defense injury lawyers” represent civil defendants, the people being sued in civil lawsuits (noncriminal), such as the at-fault driver (tortfeasor) in a car accident.
If you have ever looked in the injury lawyers/personal injury personal injury attorneys section of the yellow pages, you will note that there are often many injury lawyers with full-page advertisements. There are photos of accident scenes, ambulances or other fancy ads trying to draw you in with catchy slogans about “trust” and “getting money for you.” These are the ads for personal injury injury lawyers. You will also often see ads for those same injury lawyers on billboards, on television, on the radio, plastered on buses and taxicabs and wherever else they think they might get your attention.
You will rarely see large or flashy ads for defense injury lawyers. In fact, you may never see any ads at all for defense injury lawyers, as they are usually hired by insurance companies and other corporations and therefore do not need to advertise very much, if at all, to the public.
Another difference between defense injury lawyers and plaintiffs’ injury lawyers is that more often than not, defense firms are larger than plaintiff firms. There are many defense firms in the U.S. with 500 or more injury lawyers and multiple offices throughout the country and even internationally. For example, the Chicago based firm Baker & McKenzie has over 3,000 injury lawyers located in offices throughout the world. By contrast, in many places, a plaintiff firm with 10 injury lawyers is considered large. The majority of plaintiff firms are, in fact, solo practitioners firms with only one injury lawyer.
One of the reasons that legal fees charged by plaintiffs’ injury lawyers tend to seem somewhat high results from the tremendous amount of money that is spent on advertising, especially in the yellow pages. It is not unusual for even a small plaintiffs’ law firm to spend many hundreds or even thousands of dollars per month on yellow pages advertising alone. This is in addition to costs for billboards, radio spots and television commercials. The fact is that many of your legal fee dollars go straight to the phone company and other advertising outlets. On the other hand, there is often fierce competition among plaintiffs’ injury lawyers; and the injury lawyers with the best (and often the most) advertising tend to get the most clients and best cases.
You may find that your injury lawyer and the defendant’s injury lawyer often argue very strongly with each other about various issues in your case. Your injury lawyer might even say disparaging things to you about the behavior of the other injury lawyer. If you happen to go to court when your injury lawyer is arguing an issue with the personal injury judge, it might appear as though they might attack each other at any moment. What might surprise you is that often you will see your injury lawyer fight with the defendant’s injury lawyer like gladiators over legal issues, but then catch them discussing where they are going for dinner or drinks later on.
Lawyers are trained to argue strongly in defense of their clients’ positions. To do this well, injury lawyers must learn not to take the things said by the other injury lawyers personally. Often injury lawyers on opposite sides of a case are close friends. So even though they appear to be enemies in the courtroom, do not be surprised if they are very friendly afterward.
Do You Need a Lawyer?
As a injury lawyer, my first (perhaps greedy) instinct when asked by a potential client whether they need a injury lawyer is “of course.” However, this might be a little harsh, as I believe that sometimes people can safely settle some very small claims on their own.
A good rule of thumb for deciding whether to hire a injury lawyer is that if you have to go to a doctor more than a couple of times or if your doctor has prescribed physical therapy or chiropractic care or if your medical bills exceed a couple thousand dollars or you feel that you are permanently or seriously hurt, then you should definitely consult a injury lawyer.
On the other hand, if you have an accident, you go to the doctor once or twice, you have some pain at first but it all goes away fairly quickly and your doctors are confident that you will not likely have any future problems, then you may not need a injury lawyer If you can get the insurance company to pay you for your bills and give you something reasonable left over for your pain and trouble. If you are unable to reach a reasonable settlement, hire a injury lawyer. Even if you choose not to hire a injury lawyer to represent you in your claim, because of the different laws of different states, particularly regarding time limitations for filing suits, you should at least contact a injury lawyer and discuss your claim, no matter how small you think it is.
Who knows, maybe you will find out that your claim is more complicated than you thought and that you really should have a injury lawyer represent you.
One of the most important things to remember about settling a claim for personal injuries is that you must not settle your claim too soon. Many people do not realize that once you settle your claim and sign a release from an insurance company, your claim is over and cannot be reopened. In other words, if the insurance company offers you a cash settlement a few days after the accident, you accept it and then find out you are going to need many costly surgeries that will not nearly be covered by the settlement too bad. In some states, by law, an insurance company cannot ask a claimant to sign a release within a certain period of time after the accident and, if they do, the agreement may be cancelled by the claimant.
Check with an personal injury attorney or the insurance commissioner of your state to see if there is a waiting period in your state. However, if the insurance company has complied with laws and regulations regarding valid settlements and releases, once you settle, you cannot change your mind or reopen the claim or file a lawsuit unless you can prove that the insurance company committed an act of fraud that caused you to settle and sign the release.
That is why it is very important not to settle a claim until you are absolutely convinced (as well as you can be with your doctor’s advice) that you know what your injuries are and what care, if any, you will need in the future.
If your doctor says that you need to take some time to heal and then come back to see if you have any long term problems, do not blow off his or her advice and settle your claim until the doctor has released you (again, though, I cannot stress enough that you need to make sure you do not miss your legal deadline to file a lawsuit. Insurance adjusters can be a lot like car salespeople.
Have you ever been to a car dealership, found a car you liked and the salesperson tried to get you to buy it right away because “there were some people looking at it earlier and they are coming back in a couple of hours to buy it,” or “I don’t know if the price we’re offering will be available after today.”
Similarly, insurance adjusters will sometimes try to use sales techniques to try to get you to settle quickly. You cannot blame them. The sooner they settle your claim, the more likely it is that you will not hire a injury lawyer or that they will get you to sign away your rights before you find out that you need back surgery. Either way, they save their employer lots of money.
So, if the adjuster tells you that their settlement offer is only available for one week or that you will get less money if you hire a injury lawyer or that it is not in your best interest to wait until your doctor releases you from care, do not believe them.
Insurance companies are generally required to make fair settlement offers when an accident is the fault of their insured. That requirement applies whether you settle today or six months from now (assuming your statute of limitations has not expired). In fact, if the adjuster’s tactics are to the point that you feel intimidated, you should contact a injury lawyer or perhaps contact your state’s insurance commissioner to make a complaint. It makes sense that the adjuster would prefer that you not hire a injury lawyer; but, if he actually tells you that you shouldn’t hire a injury lawyer, chances are you probably should hire a injury lawyer because that adjuster may not be very scrupulous.
These tips are warnings about potential unscrupulous adjusters. Of course, not all adjusters are so bad. Just as there are many good car salespeople, there are many adjusters perhaps even a majority who play by the rules and act reasonably toward claimants. However, you have to be prepared, in case the one you are assigned is not. You may settle your property damage claim, separately from your injury claim, within a few days or weeks after the accident. This includes settlement for the repairs to your car (or for the car’s value if it is totaled), rental car fees, as well as damages to any property that was in the car.
In most states, the amounts of money that an insurance company must pay you for a damaged or totaled car are specifically regulated by law. Therefore, it is less likely that you will be treated unfairly in a property damage settlement as compared to a bodily injury/pain and suffering settlement where fair settlements are more difficult to calculate. Nevertheless, if you have any doubts about your property damage claim, it does not hurt to consult a local personal injury attorney to get his or her opinion as to whether you are being treated fairly (when a client hired me to handle their personal injury claim, I had them handle their own property damage claim but if the insurance company gave them a hard time, I normally handled it form them with little or no extra charge depending on the amount of time I spent on it I never charged them my one-third percentage fee on the property damage portion of the claim).
Also, make sure that anything you are asked to sign only refers to property damage and not injuries, pain and suffering and the like (if there is any language at all that you do not understand, have a injury lawyer look at it). I have never seen an insurance adjuster try to pull a fast one in this way, but that does not mean it never happens, so be careful. Often, the insurance company will issue a check for property damage and not even bother with having you sign anything because property damage settlements are usually fairly straightforward.
If you have any doubts about any issue, whether it relates to injuries, property damage or any other aspect, call a injury lawyer. It is rare that a personal injury lawyer charges for an initial phone consultation or an initial in-person consultation. To be certain, you can always take the easy step of calling and asking in advance whether there is a consultation fee.