Were you injured through someone else’s negligence? Did your family lose a loved one caused by another’s reckless or careless actions? At Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers, LLC, our personal injury attorneys represent injured victims to ensure they receive the maximum compensation they deserve for their damages.
Call our legal team (888) 424-5757 (toll-free phone number) or use the contact form today to schedule a free consultation. We can protect your legal rights, discuss what happened, and provide legal options on how to move your case forward.
Many victims must hire an experienced personal injury lawyer after suffering injuries caused by negligence or an intentional act. However, the type of personal injury lawyer they choose to handle their injury lawsuit will not only impact the outcome of the case but determine their stress level through the usually lengthy litigation process.
Unfortunately, many attorneys will take an injury case even if it is not their specialty, harming the injured party instead of helping. Below is a comprehensive list of what is required to choose the best type of lawyer for an injury lawsuit.
Accepting a Personal Injury Case: Professionalism
A lawyer’s professionalism is usually an extension of their personality that often displays the good rapport necessary when dealing directly with defendants, insurance companies, and the courts. An experienced, trustworthy attorney will display the professional behaviors required for a successful injury law practice that might involve:
- A good work ethic
- Competence in civil tort law
- Utilizing the appropriate professional behavior for specific situations
- Showing respect for all individuals regardless of their class or status
Hiring an attorney who lacks professionalism is often detrimental to the victim’s case, especially if the personal injury lawsuit goes to trial. Conversely, selecting a respected personal injury lawyer with a high sense of decency and professionalism can go a long way before a judge and jury.
A typical injury case will develop a confidential relationship between the injured party and their attorney, who will share legal advice on seeking compensation for their damages.
Filing a Personal Injury Claim: Communication
After an initial investigation, your injury lawyer will build their case based on available evidence, witness statements, medical records, and police reports. The lawyer will first submit a claim to the at-fault person’s insurance company through a demand letter outlining pertinent information and evidence.
The attorney’s communication skills will be crucial in dealing directly with the claims adjuster, who will attempt to resolve the case as quickly as possible. The lawyer will also use their communication skills if the personal injury claim goes to trial, where the case will be presented to jurors.
Choose a personal injury attorney with optimal communication skills who understands your questions and provides answers within a reasonable time. A good candidate to handle your case is a lawyer who answers your phone calls, replies to your emails and text messages, and contacts you when necessary to explain how the case is progressing.
Any personal injury law firm that fails to return your emails and calls is not only frustrating but likely reveals that the attorney has failed to work diligently on your personal injury case.
Resolving a Personal Injury Lawsuit: Relevant Knowledge & Experience
Injury attorneys specializing in the accident, event, or medical procedure that led to the injuries can overcome the legal obstacles of resolving your injury claim. Many insurance companies will deny or delay injury claims for various reasons, including a lack of evidence, what the injured party said in their recorded statement, or evidence found in the police report.
These lawyers typically have the relevant knowledge and experience necessary to resolve the case through a negotiated settlement meeting.
In some cases, negotiations fail when the defendant’s insurer makes a bad faith offer or the plaintiffs’ lawyer and defendants cannot reach an agreement. When this occurs, the lawyer must be competent and experienced enough to take the case to trial and convince the jury that the other party is legally liable for their client’s damages.
Typically, their experience comes from handling cases similar to yours.
Moving the Case Forward: Time Management
All personal injury claims handled in civil courts involve deadlines where specific paperwork must be filed at the appropriate time. Initially, a claim or lawsuit can only be filed if the statute of limitations deadlines have not yet arrived.
Taking too long to contact a lawyer or hiring an incompetent attorney could be disastrous if the filing documents’ timeline has already passed. On the other hand, a competent lawyer is usually efficient in time management and has a legal team to ensure that all necessary paperwork is filed promptly.
Overworked or overbooked attorneys attempting to manage too many lawsuits at once often struggle to provide the best representation for each client. Choosing the right attorney usually involves hiring someone who has your best interest in mind to ensure that your case is resolved for the compensation you deserve.
Specialized Personal Injury Cases
Hiring lawyers specializing in personal injury cases provides victims peace of mind while dealing with the post-traumatic stress and emotional trauma caused by the accident or event. However, their legal case must be filed before the strict time limits (statute of limitations) deadlines pass.
Car Accident
An auto accident does not only cause emotional upheaval, but victims can suffer severe injuries, intense pain, and property damage. Common injuries include traumatic brain injuries (TBIs), spinal cord injuries, fractures, broken bones, contusions, lacerations, puncture wounds, burns, dismemberment (amputation), and other damages.
Even a simple auto accident can generate over a couple of thousand dollars in medical bills. In addition, horrific accidents can leave the injured party with temporary or permanent disabilities, quadriplegia, paraplegia, or death.
An attorney working on behalf of the injured plaintiff in a car accident case can ensure that all parties at fault for causing the crash are held liable for compensatory and punitive damages. In addition, the lawyer will ensure that all available evidence is collected at the accident scene when possible.
Medical Malpractice
Many victims of medical negligence pursue compensation from the doctor’s insurance coverage to pay for hospitalization, corrective surgeries, and other expenses. The most common types of medical negligence involve medication errors, surgical mistakes, defective medical devices, and nursing negligence.
Typically, a competent lawyer or law firm will not send a demand letter to the defendant’s insurance company to negotiate a settlement until their client (the plaintiff) has reached their maximum medical improvement (MMI). By law, maximum medical improvement is a legal term that shows that the injured party has received all medical treatment required to recover as much as possible.
Typically, the defense attorneys working on behalf of the insurer covering the doctor will fight aggressively on behalf of their client to minimize payment to the injured patient. A competent attorney will use medical experts who can accurately determine the severity of the injured patient’s condition and serve as witnesses at trial.
A typical personal injury case involving medical negligence could take a few days up to two weeks before the case goes to the jury. Because of that, all parties involved in the case will participate in mandatory settlement conferences and submit motions to determine the facts and evidence that can be presented at trial.
Nursing Home Abuse
A nursing home abuse lawyer helps the infirm, disabled, and elderly appropriately value their abuse case to ensure they receive the compensation they deserve during the demand settlement meeting. In addition, a lawyer working on behalf of their client can ensure they receive adequate monetary recovery to pay their medical bills and compensation for their emotional distress and loss of quality of life.
An attorney specializing in nursing home neglect cases will usually investigate what happened, subpoena evidence, and build the case to prove causation through medical expert depositions, eyewitness depositions, and:
- The resident’s medical records
- Nursing home staff schedules
- Nursing home operating procedures
- The nursing home’s hiring and training procedures
- Surveillance footage
- The caregiver’s keycard data
Many injured victims choose to hire legal counsel to level the playing field in a court of law to get the compensation they deserve. Most nursing home neglect cases involve pressure wounds (bedsores, pressure sores, pressure ulcers, and decubitus ulcers), generating colossal health care costs and non-economic damages, including pain and suffering.
What Happens If I Don’t Get an Attorney to Get the Compensation I Deserve?
Many injured victims are often off-put by the amount an attorney will take negotiating a settlement or presenting evidence at trial. Commonly, the injured party will sign an agreement to allow the attorney to take 33% of their settlement amount to resolve their case.
If a negotiated agreement cannot be met, and the case goes to trial, their attorney will likely take 40% of the jury award or more when handling complex cases, like medical negligence.
In many cases, family members, an insurance agent, or an insurance adjuster will attempt to convince the victim not to use an attorney to increase the amount they receive upon resolution. While logically, this may make sense, statistics show that injured parties with legal representation receive over three times as much as a plaintiff who handles their case alone without an attorney.
While many personal injury claims are simple procedures that require minimal paperwork, resolving a wrongful death or personal injury lawsuit requires comprehensive knowledge of federal or state civil tort law, which is often well beyond a layperson’s understanding.
An attorney can also ensure that the injured party receives all the medical care required to heal as much as possible from the best doctors and healthcare professionals by postponing payment until the case is resolved.
Additionally, an experienced injury attorney will investigate the evidence before filing a personal injury lawsuit to determine if third parties might also be at fault for causing the damage. Adding additional defendants to a personal injury lawsuit can maximize compensation beyond what the injured party would have received without legal representation.
Hiring a Personal Injury Lawyer to Handle Your Injury Case
Are you an injury victim harmed by another person or a company’s negligence? Has your family lost a loved one through a wrongful death? Are you seeking justice and looking to get the compensation you deserve for your damages?
Our personal injury law firm specializes in numerous practice areas, including motor vehicle accidents, medical negligence, nursing home abuse, product liability, defective products, birth injury, premises liability cases, and wrongful death.
Call our law offices at (888) 424-5757 (toll-free phone call) or use the contact form today to schedule a free evaluation and tell us about your case. All sensitive or confidential information you share remains private through an attorney-client relationship.
Our law firm accepts all injury cases on a contingency fee basis, meaning that they are paid for their legal services only after resolving the case at court or through a negotiated settlement.
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Many million-dollar personal injury claims have already been resolved, allowing victims to recover compensation for their damages, medical bills, lost income, pain, and suffering. Call our law office today at (888) 424-5757 to hold the liable party responsible for your damages.
