Updated 4/1/2022
Did you or your loved ones suffer injuries after a car accident? If another driver was responsible for the accident, you need to hire an attorney. A truck accident lawyer will help you through the stages of a car accident lawsuit. After an accident, you can lose your income, incur medical costs, and incur costs for repairing or replacing your damaged car. However, insurance companies may not account for all those expenses. That’s why it is essential to work with a personal injury attorney to negotiate a fair settlement.
Without legal experience, it is not easy to file a lawsuit or deal with insurance agents. Most personal injury victims settle for less because they don’t understand the process. A lawyer will help you with paperwork and ensure you meet the state’s deadline for submitting a claim. In addition, accident and injury lawyers operate on a contingency fee basis. This means you will pay a lawyer a certain percentage after winning the case.
To get rightful compensation on accident personal injury claims, a lawyer should investigate the cause of the accident. At times, police only record information at the accident scene, which may not be enough evidence in court. Lastly, hiring an accident lawyer gives you peace of mind.
The world is a dangerous place. That’s not meant to scare you–it’s just a fact. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, over 30 million people injure themselves seriously enough to require medical attention. What’s worse, thousands of these injuries occur in the most mundane of ways, i.e., when using an every day product or tool that should have been designed with your safety in mind. If you are one of these millions who had a fight with an air bag and lost or burned yourself on an unconscionably hot coffee maker, you might want to look into hiring a personal injury lawyer. Thousands of lawsuits are filed each year as a result of injuries sustained while using various products, and personal injury attorneys can help you win compensation.
Choosing a PI attorney is an important and sometimes difficult decision however. We’ve all seen the tv commercials; every car accident lawyer and ambulance chaser tells us that they are the PI attorney to go with. Below are a few ways to weed out the PI lawyers who printed their degrees off the internet. Hopefully these simple procedures will lead you to a PI attorney who will get you the most gavel bang for your buck:
1. Create a short list. By this we mean, do your homework. Do an internet search and ask around (chances are you already know someone who hired a PI attorney and has a story to tell). When you have ten names, sit down for an hour or two and check out their online presence. If they don’t even have a web page, this probably does not bode well for their professionalism.
2. Compare policies. Not all PI attorneys operate in the same way. Some consultations are free, and others cost money the minute they answer the phone. More importantly, some PI attorneys offer a “no win, no fee” deal, where basically if they don’t win your case, then you don’t owe them any money. Every lawyer on your list should advertise this, but make sure to grill them on the policy. Compare the percent commission they’ll take, for example, if they do win, and make sure there are no hidden fees for filing paperwork. Finally…
3. Ask about specialties. If you cut yourself on the Chop-O-Matic 5,000, it’s probably not a good idea to hire a lawyer with experience mostly in car accidents or medical malpractice. One good thing about the market saturation is you really do have your pick of attorneys with very niche experience, so take advantage of that.
We hope this article was a helpful navigation tool. Make sure to stop back in and let us know who you went with in the comments (and if they won!)
