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If you ever need to hire a personal injury lawyer, you’re probably not experiencing a happy time in your life. Usually, you must hire a personal injury attorney if a person or business hurt you or made you sick. Maybe you must sue a person or company on someone else’s behalf if you’re pursuing a wrongful death suit.
You’ll need to find a skilled attorney if you want to win your case. Luckily, if you start looking around, you should soon realize why personal injury law appeals to top legal talent.
It’s because this field is potentially quite profitable. With that in mind, you should have no issues tracking down a lawyer who can represent you as you go after the person or company you believe harmed you.
You should ask your personal injury lawyer some questions before you hire them, though. At a minimum, ask them about the following five things and listen carefully to each response.
Have They Have Handled a Case Like Yours Before?
When you go on a personal injury website, they should have a list of the kinds of cases they handle. However, you should still make a point of asking your would-be lawyer directly if they have ever represented a client in a similar situation to what you’re experiencing.
For instance, if you’re bringing a product liability lawsuit against a company, you will want an attorney who has represented clients in that situation before. If you’re suing because you slipped and fell in a store, you should feel better about hiring a lawyer who has had several clients in that same situation.
Did They Force a Settlement or Get a Jury’s Verdict in a Client’s Favor?
If your would-be lawyer tells you that they have represented many individuals in situations like yours before, you should next ask them how those cases turned out. If you do hire a lawyer who handled many product liability cases, medical malpractice cases, or whatever other type of lawsuit you’re filing, you want to know that they won those cases.
In personal injury law, winning a case can mean two things. It could mean that a lawyer forced a settlement offer that their client accepted. It could also mean that the trial process happened and the jury found in the plaintiff’s favor.
If every time your lawyer accomplished one of those two things when they represented clients in situations like yours, then you can probably hire them with more confidence. If they admit to you that they have a mixed record in those kinds of cases, then you may want to go with someone else.
How Long Have They Been Practicing Law?
You should also ask the lawyer how long they have practiced personal injury law. If you think about what might happen if you have a relatively new attorney on your side, it’s obvious why you want someone more experienced.
If you hire a personal injury lawyer who’s fresh out of law school, maybe it will work out, but you have no guarantees. That’s not to say you have a victory guarantee with a more experienced lawyer, either. However, if you go with someone who has represented hundreds of clients like you in the past, you can probably feel more confident you will get a positive outcome.
It’s sometimes nice to give someone their first chance, but if you do, you might not get the satisfactory conclusion you want. You may have millions of dollars on the line in this lawsuit, and you also want to know you got justice.
If your relatively new lawyer botches a key part of the proceedings, then you might walk away with nothing. When you look at it that way, you’ll realize how much this decision matters.
Do They Have a Trustworthy, Capable Investigator Working for Them?
You will also want to talk to your lawyer about exactly what they can do for you if you hire them. Obviously, they will represent you, but you should know that they have the resources to investigate what you say happened and to collect enough evidence to either force a settlement or get that all-important verdict in your favor.
If you go to a larger law firm, then they might very well have a whole army of investigators working for them. That can often benefit you. If the law firm you’re using has a whole team that will look into your claim and collect every piece of evidence that’s out there, you getting a settlement offer or a favorable verdict becomes much more likely.
If you’re considering a smaller law firm with a single investigator, that does not necessarily mean you shouldn’t use them. You will probably want to hear from your lawyer that they trust this investigator’s skills and background implicitly, though. You will want to hear that their investigative measures have helped win several prior lawsuits like yours.
What Kind of Payment Plan Will They Accept?
If you like the answers to all the questions you’ve asked so far, then one remains. You need to talk to this lawyer about what kind of a payment structure you can set up with them.
Almost all personal injury lawyers will work with you on a contingency basis. Maybe you’ve heard an attorney mention that on a late-night ad for legal services on a local TV station.
Contingency means that if your lawyer can’t either force a settlement offer or get a jury’s verdict in your favor, then you don’t have to pay them anything. That’s really the only payment structure that makes sense in these situations.
If you pay your lawyer another way, such as giving them an hourly rate for their services, then you must presumably still pay them even if you lose your case and get nothing. If that happens, you might end up with less money after the trial than when it started, and you obviously don’t want that.
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