Are Personal Injury Lawyers Worth It?
If you break a bone, you wouldn’t think twice about consulting a doctor. If you are building a house, you would first call a contractor. But you may not know that when you find yourself in an accident, it is critical that your first call should be to hire skilled personal injury attorneys with ample experience understanding the nuances of the law so you can recover fair and reasonable compensation for your injuries.
If you are asking yourself whether it is worth it to hire a personal injury lawyer, the answer is clearly yes. Don’t convince yourself that you will be “saving money” if you decide to represent yourself. You will almost surely cost yourself far more money than you would pay qualified personal injury attorneys for their legal fee.
First, it is important to understand how personal injury attorneys get paid. Unlike attorneys that may offer you a service where they bill you by the hour, your personal injury attorneys will take a case on a contingent basis. This means that they will advance the costs of litigation on your behalf and will only recover those costs as well as their legal fee if they can secure you a financial recovery. Because personal injury attorneys do not make any money, and in fact lose money when they cannot secure monetary compensation for injured victims, they generally do not take cases they believe will not result in a financial recovery. If you entrust your case to a trusted personal injury attorney, you will know you have hired a skilled legal professional that believes in your case and will fight to get you every dollar you are owed.
Furthermore, the legal system is simply not set up for individuals to successfully represent themselves in personal injury actions. If you were to handle your own personal injury case in court, you would be responsible to know all deadlines for filing of legal papers, how to draft pleadings and motions and other legal documents and appear at regular court conferences. You would be responsible to comply with court orders you may not understand or else risk dismissal of your case. You would be expected to be know the legal requirements of your case, even though you lack the legal experience to do so. The defense would likely take advantage of your lack of expertise and inundate you with discovery demands that they know you will not be able to handle. Furthermore, you would not know when the defendants are demanding something proper and when they are simply fishing for harmful information that could hurt your case. Without an attorney, you would have an extremely difficult time navigating the complexities of your case and would likely lack the time and resources to succeed.
How Can a Personal Injury Lawyer Help Me?
When you hire skilled, experienced personal injury attorneys, they will handle every aspect of your case for you. This will ensure that you do not have to worry about the day to day requirements of prosecuting your case, and instead you can focus on getting medical treatment and recovering after a serious injury. You need trusted counsel who understands the law and how insurance companies operate. You need attorneys who know how to gather the proper evidence and hire experts that will maximize the value of your case. You need attorneys who will prepare you for every important question that you may be asked at your deposition. Finally, you need attorneys who know the value of your case and are skilled in negotiating the highest possible monetary value for your case. Without a trusted attorney on your side, you would have no idea when you are being offered fair and reasonable compensation for your injuries.
The insurance company you are filing a claim against will have attorneys fighting on their side, and you have the right to put up the same fight. In addition, insurance carriers simply do not take cases as seriously when victims do not retain a qualified attorney to fight for them. According to a study by Insurance Research Council, an individual who hires legal representation is likely to get a compensation package that is three times larger than any compensation you might receive on you own. There is truly nothing to lose and everything to gain by hiring trusted, skilled personal injury attorneys that will fight to get you the monetary compensation you deserve while you attempt to move on with your life following a devastating injury.