What to look for in a personal injury attorney

When a person’s been injured, what type of attorney should they be looking for? And with all the personal injury attorneys that are out there, how does somebody go about finding the right one?

An injured person will want a personal injury attorney. If you’ve got a contract matter, a contract attorney is great. If you’re going to do an adoption, a family law attorney is who you want, but when someone’s been injured, they need a personal injury lawyer.

In today’s day and age, the internet is probably your best resource for researching personal injury attorneys. You can find out their background, their experience and their track record.

What are some of the most important things that we can look for when hiring an attorney?

Remember Jack of all trades = master of none. If you’ve got a serious medical condition, you’re going to go to a medical specialist. Likewise. If you’ve been seriously injured, the most important thing you need to do is go to a lawyer who specializes in injuries. 

Remember that the person that harmed you usually has a multi-billion dollar insurance company on their side such as State Farm of Geico. That insurance company already has a team assembled of adjusters, investigators, and lawyers ready to bring the fight to you.

Another important thing is you want a lawyer who can go toe to toe with that kind of opponent and still win the day. Generally speaking, you wanna look for a law firm that has many attorneys and has been in existence for many years and has a proven track record in your kind of case.

Should you choose a large law firm for a personal injury case?

You want make sure that the firm you hire has the resources necessary to handle your case the right way. 

Insurance companies have lots of money to throw into a defense of a case. You want to make sure that your lawyers have the financial resources available to be able to deal with whatever the defense throws at them. 

Also, you want to make sure that the firm you hire has enough resources to be able to give you whatever attention you need and to deal with the unique challenges and problems of your particular case.

Can choosing the right law firm and the right lawyer or help someone get better results and a larger compensation amount?

Sometimes a case can be settled early on, but more often than not, the insurance company is going to put up a fight. Then the case has to go to court. 

You want an attorney who’s experienced there. And while it’s true that most cases never have to go to trial, if the insurance company continues to fail to treat you fairly, you want to make sure that you hire an attorney who’s experienced in trial and has a proven track record of successes there who can take the case to trial, win the day, and let the jury temselsves tell that insurance company just what they owe you.

Can somebody who’s living on a moderate budget, afford working with a large firm?

Everybody can afford a large personal injury firm, and that’s because personal injury attorneys work on a contingency fee basis. So contingency means that until and unless they win the case for you, you don’t owe them 1 cent until they get the recovery for you.

Remember it’s not the person or the property you’re going up against, it’s the insurance company almost invariably. There’s an insurance company behind the scenes pulling the strings in most cases.

In summary, someone has a better chance for justice by hiring a large experienced firm who can go head to head with an insurance company.

In fact, insurance companies know which are the big established firms that are willing to go to the mat for their clients. Oftentimes that knowledge translates to better results at an earlier phase of the case,

Since all firms claim to be committed to their clients or have the super track record, how do we know who to believe?

I don’t think it surprises anybody that lawyers would fall all over themselves to tell you how great they are. We’d recommend you listen to what their clients have to say about them instead.

So if you go to their website, look to see if they have client videos. And if they do, listen to what the clients have to say. If they don’t have client videos, you might need to ask why. Is it only the lawyer who’s tooting his own horn and with respect to results?  Anybody can claim to get great results, i’s another thing to prove it. 

So look on those attorney websites and see if it’s just a lot of talk or if they’ve put their results in writing where you can look at them.

For more information, see our detailed article covering the most important personal injury questions