If you’ve incurred injury due to other people’s negligence, then you deserve to be compensated. For instance, you’ve been in a car accident and sustained injuries. As a result, you couldn’t work for a couple of days. This means you’ve incurred financial losses, too.
You can work with a personal injury attorney to file claims on your behalf when such incidents happen. From collecting documents to negotiating with the insurance company, your lawyer will help you. However, there are numerous personal injury lawyers, so it’d be hard to choose the right one. With such, you can use the following considerations when choosing:
1. Search For Potential Lawyers
These days, it’s easier to find potential lawyers. You can easily use Google search, type in what you’re looking for, and the results will show a list. For instance, you can search for a ‘personal injury lawyer in Long Island, NY’ if you live in that area. You can then choose Terry Katz and Associates and other law firms in that location from the results page.
From there, you can visit each of the sites to check their services. Sometimes the results will also show ratings and reviews from their previous clients. You can check these out to understand how they’ve been with their previous clients. If there are more good reviews, then it means they’ve provided quality services.
2. Experience
Another consideration is the attorney’s experience. It’s best to hire one with more experience related to your injury. That’s because they have a higher chance of winning your case or claims. After all, they already know how to handle such cases since they’re familiar with the process, negotiation, and evidence required to win your case.
For instance, it’s best to hire car accident lawyers if you’re involved in a car accident. Hiring a personal injury lawyer who doesn’t have experience with car accidents may not be a good option. They’re unfamiliar with the process of car accident claims which could affect your chances of winning.
You can gauge a lawyer’s experience when reading their previous clients’ testimonies. The lawyer’s website also contains articles that they’re usually familiar with. Browsing their site will help you know if their experience suits your needs.
You can also ask them questions like what their success rates are during consultation. You may also want to ask them what they did when handling a similar issue, as you can use their answer to weigh their efforts.
3. Free Assessment Or Consultation
Since you’re still choosing among your list of candidates, it’s best to check out lawyers offering free consultation. Here, they must assess your case based on your statements and the documents presented.
During this time, the personal injury attorney should tell you if you have a case or not. This means that they should have an unbiased and objective opinion. Receiving an honest assessment is vital so that you won’t have to waste your time and efforts pursuing a case or claim that you may not win. This will also help you decide whether to hire a lawyer or not.
If you have a case, the lawyer can also give you an estimate of how much the claim is.
4. Lawyer To Personally Handle Your Case
You should also consider the lawyer who’ll personally handle your case. Sometimes law firms assign a different lawyer to meet and persuade you while another lawyer will pursue your claim. What’s worse is that they may appoint a rookie attorney to help you with your case.
Although experience isn’t the only basis to hire an attorney, meeting the one who will pursue your case is essential. Your first meeting will determine if you can have a good rapport. If it’s a different lawyer, you may end up not having a good relationship. This could then affect your communication, which is essential if you want to win your case.
5. Contingency Fee
While most personal injury lawyers offer contingency fees, it’s still safe to ask your candidate. The contingency fee is a percentage basis of the amount you’ll recover. This means you’ll only pay your lawyer after you receive your claim. As a result, you won’t be paying attorney fees throughout your case.
You should also be aware of the other expenses or fees you need to spend. This includes case expenses wherein you have to pay third parties involved so your case will keep going. These are the filing fees, physician reports fees, medical records fees, court reporter expenses, and expert witness fees.
In addition, law firms vary in how they handle case expenses. One of which is paying the costs throughout the case. Here, you’ll be reimbursed by the lawyer after your case. This is beneficial if you don’t have financial resources at the moment. So, asking your lawyer how they handle case expenses should also be a priority.
In this method, you need to know what will happen to the case expenses if you’ve lost. Some law firms will still make you reimburse them while other law firms won’t ask you for reimbursement as part of their policy. Thus, it’s best if you ask them about such a policy, too.
Another way is when lawyers require you to pay all the case expenses. This is also beneficial since you have more cash after receiving your claim. However, this could be a disadvantage if you don’t have enough resources at the moment.
6. Accessibility
Lastly, you should be able to reach your lawyer easily. This means that you can communicate with them about your case. Although they’d be busy most of the time, they should still be able to return your calls.
When they’re accessible, you can get regular updates regarding your case. Even if they’re not the ones to answer your queries personally, their staff should be able to do so. This way, you can avoid wondering how your case is going.
Conclusion
With the key considerations listed above, you can now start sifting through your list of candidates. Don’t jump onto the first law firm that comes out of your search engine results pages. You still have other options, and making sure that they have the qualities you’re looking for is a must. That way, you can have confidence that you can win your case or receive the claims you deserve.
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