Do You Need An Attorney For Your Personal Injury Case?

You are not required to hire an attorney to pursue your claim, although most individuals choose to do so.

Your choice of whether or not to be represented should be made based on consideration
of factors that include these:

Do you have the time and energy to handle the case yourself?

Even if your case seems straightforward, most cases involve numerous telephone calls, letters, and negotiation. If you handle the case yourself, you need to collect all the relevant records to prove your claim including the liability and damage aspects. You need to carry on all of the communications with witnesses, medical personnel, and the insurance company representatives or lawyers.

Do you have adequate knowledge of the claims process to handle the case yourself?

The insurance company is thoroughly versed in considering claims, and finding defenses to them. The decisions made early on in an injury case by the claimant will stay with the case to the sweet or bitter end. What type of medical attention is both effective for you and consistent with a good settlement? Will it help or hurt you to give a recorded statement to the insurance company? If you don't know the right answers at the right time, the case is permanently weakened or lost. You cannot assume that you can first try to handle a claim on your own and then go to a lawyer. By the time many claimants decide they need representation fundamental strategic errors have often been made that cannot be cured by even the most astute representation imaginable. If you are thoroughly versed in the claims process then you may want to try representing yourself - otherwise think twice. Almost no one has a learning curve steep enough to, without substantial prior experience, competently handle their own personal injury claim.

Cost/Benefit Analysis

If you hire an attorney you have the benefit of a highly trained person looking after your interests. If the fee arrangement is contingent then your lawyer receives no fee unless he or she wins your case and unless you approve settlement of the case. The lawyer has a common economic interest with you and is looking for an outcome that will benefit you and the law firm. The cost to you is the fee that is paid to the lawyer at the end of the case.

Some claimants believe that you could be better off not being represented because you might receive "100% of your settlement" versus receiving "66% of your settlement" (or whatever percentage) after attorney's fees.

Yet, in the typical case the unrepresented claimant receives less than the represented claimant, even after deduction of attorneys fees and costs. Why? An unrepresented claimaint typically does multiple things almost from the inception of the claim that knock value off the claim. The reduction in claim value from failure to pursue the best strategies from the beginning typically far exceeds the 33% that most lawyers charge. Worse yet are all of the non-economic factors that affect the unrepresented claimant. These often include failure to have access to the best available medical treatment, failure to receive needed treatment, stress from dealing with the insurance company and its adjusters and lawyers, and multiple delays in the settlement process. At the end of the road the insurance company will take into consideration that the claimant has no attorney and offer less figuring the claimant doesn't have to pay an attorney. In the worst - but common - case, the claimant fails to take a step critical to preserving the legal claim and ends up empty handed.

Is our view point skewed because we are lawyers? We would say that our viewpoint is skewed by our experiences over twenty years in dealing with insurance companies. If
you want your claim to be well handled do what most attorneys do - seek effective legal representation promptly.