You’ve suffered injuries, perhaps in a car crash, due to medical malpractice or nursing home abuse, by using a defective product, or while visiting a dangerous premises.
Now, your days are filled with you receiving treatment, and you’re unable to work, and you feel like every time you look down at your phone, you’re receiving yet another call from an insurance adjuster. To make matters even worse, your household bills are mounting, and accident-related ones are now being added into the mix.
You’re starting to think it’s time to reach out to a personal injury lawyer for some guidance and support.
While contacting an attorney is top on your to-do list, you may find the thought of doing so intimidating. You may be unsure of how to explain your situation or about what questions to ask to ensure you’ve contacted the best attorney for your case.
Our goal is to put an end to that confusion for you. Continue reading, where we’ll not only list off various questions to ask any prospective attorney that you’re considering hiring to handle your case for you but also explain why those questions are important to pose to them.
What To Ask Any Attorney You’re Considering Having Handle Your Injury Case
There are different practice areas within the law, each with its respective applicable statutes and case-handling procedures. A lawyer’s expertise in handling cases like these, and especially a particular subsector of this area of the law, only improves with experience and time.
Thus, it’s imperative to ask the personal injury lawyer you speak with the following questions:
- How long have you been practicing personal injury law?
- Have you previously worked on cases like my own (both in terms of how the injury occurred and the nature of the harm suffered)?
- Can you put me in contact with past clients, or do you have references or testimonials about your provision of legal services that I can view?
Once you’ve confirmed they handle cases (in general) like yours and you two discuss more specifics surrounding what happened to you, there may be a few additional questions to ask about your legal matter and ones like it, such as:
- Do you feel that I have a pursuable claim?
- What do you feel are any flaws my potential case has?
- Do you typically have to take cases like mine to trial, or do you resolve them out of court?
- What is your success rate in handling similar cases?
- How long can I expect it to take to settle my case?
Each person has different expectations in terms of what they expect out of someone they hire and what type of communication style they prefer. It’s, therefore, important to ask a personal injury attorney you’re thinking about hiring the following:
- How much time can I expect you to dedicate to working on my case?
- Will I work directly with you on the case or with a paralegal or legal assistant?
- How often can I expect you to reach out to me about my case?
- What types of issues typically prompt you to reach out to your clients?
- What is the best way to reach you if I have a question, and when are you most easily accessible?
Since one of the goals in a personal injury lawsuit is to recover compensation for damages you’ve sustained, asking the personal injury attorney that you’re meeting with the following is also critically important:
- What fees do you charge to represent me in my injury case?
- Do your fees change if my case goes to trial?
- Will I owe you anything if insurance adjusters don’t make a settlement offer or I lose at trial?
- How much do cases like mine typically settle for?
Also, in our years of experience representing injury victims at Prochaska, Howell & Prochaska LLC, prospective clients have asked how involved they need to be in the case themselves, whether initially in sourcing bills, photographs, and records or should the case proceed to trial.
What to Look for in a Personal Injury Attorney
There are a few factors you should look for when deciding between attorneys on your shortlist. They should be:
- Experienced: Having knowledge of personal injury law, how to build cases, including sourcing evidence and filing the correct motions, and when is critically important in cases like these.
- A skilled negotiator: Any attorney’s goal is to avoid trial. Not only is building a strong case helpful in doing that, but knowing how to put forth a strong claim and play hardball with insurers to ensure their clients receive top-dollar settlements is important.
- Approachable: If you’re going to be working closely with a personal injury lawyer, then you want them to be accessible and down-to-earth when you do reach out to them. Genuineness is key when an attorney tries to establish a trusting relationship with you as their client.
- Detail-oriented and attentive: The finer details contained in a police report, product design, or medical records, for example, could potentially make or break your case. Paying close attention to filing deadlines to preserve your right to take legal action. Thus, any attorney you speak with about representing you needs to be observant and have follow-through.
- Compassionate and empathetic: If you’ve suffered serious injuries in a personal injury accident or someone close to you died in one, you want the legal professional you speak with to show a deep understanding of how significantly it has impacted you so that they can convey that to an insurance adjuster or jurors. Thus, finding a lawyer who’s compassionate for what you’ve endured and empathetic to your plight is critically important.
- Communicative: There’s nothing like feeling like you’re being kept in the dark about something related to you or someone near and dear to your heart. We don’t keep secrets regarding our clients’ cases. You can expect us to respect your need to know, keeping you abreast of what’s happening at each stage just as we learn it. You can also expect us to consult with you before we make any decisions that can potentially have beneficial or adverse impacts on your case.
- Hard-working: The personal injury attorney you hire needs to be a diligent worker from early on when securing all necessary records, reports, and evidence in your case all the way through keeping you in the loop about your case’s status, in negotiating with the insurance adjuster, and preparing the case for trial (if necessary). Your lawyer needs to be self-motivated to see all their responsibilities through without any prompting from you.
- Successful: The right attorney for handling an injury case has a solid track record of attaining successful outcomes. This indicates that they have an appropriate understanding of related laws and know how to negotiate and otherwise see a case through to its successful completion.
We hope the above list of questions to ask a personal injury lawyer has been helpful for you.
If you’d like to speak with one of our attorneys about your case, know that consultations with them are completely free. Contact us to set up a meeting between you and a member of our legal team as soon as today.
