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A personal injury lawyer is a type of attorney that deals in civil or tort law. They will usually be able to handle everything to do with personal injury claims, from start to finish. This encompasses a large number of different types of activities from gathering evidence to sending demand letters and dealing with insurance companies to negotiating compensation even up to representing their clients at trial before a jury.
Having an experienced personal injury attorney on your side is a crucial aspect of getting maximum compensation if you’ve been injured in an accident. Your attorney will be able to use every detail to build up an evidence-based case to present to the at fault party and fight to get you as much money as possible for your injuries and everything you had to deal with due to the accident. Let’s do a full breakdown of all the things your personal injury lawyer will do during the process of litigating your injury claim.
Before starting a lawsuit, your lawyer will first look at all the details to see if you have a valid claim that is worth pursuing. The four main aspects that need to be present for a claim to be valid are duty, breach of duty, causation and damages. If all four of these things are not present or the injured party is 50% or more liable for the accident, then the case isn’t a valid personal injury claim and it will not be pursued further. Other considerations come into play at this stage as well, such as determining whether the claim falls within the applicable statute of limitations.
Once your attorney has decided that you have a valid claim, then they will discuss options for moving forward. In many cases, they will talk to you about the settlement process, if they think they will get a fight from the opposing party, if there are aspects of the case that could keep them from winning a settlement, if there was fault on both sides, how long they think the settlement process will take, whether it is the type of case they feel will settle or go to trial, and much more. This discussion will help you both decide which direction to go with the claim and how you want to move towards getting fair compensation. It is important to make sure you tell your lawyer everything to do with the case during this session, as decisions made at this point can have consequences later on.
Once you have decided to work with an attorney, they will first send out letters of representation to the insurance company, opposing parties, and other entities as well. This letter of representation just lets the other parties know that you are being represented by an attorney, and that communication with you directly should cease. Once you hire an attorney, your attorney speaks for you, and so it is no longer appropriate for any other entity or person involved in the case to speak with you directly without going through your lawyer. If the other party thinks you are handling the claim on your own, they will likely try to slide things past you that an attorney would catch right away, so make sure you work with the best personal injury lawyer you can find, and ideally someone you feel you have a good relationship with and can trust.
Your attorneys will represent you at all times, whether it is talking to the opposing insurance company, their lawyers, or anyone else. This is because saying the wrong thing at any time throughout the litigation process can be detrimental to the claim. Since most injury law firms work on a contingency fee basis, they don’t want anything to happen that could negatively affect the case as much as you do, so make sure you let them do the talking, no matter who it is that wants to communicate with you about the accident.
One of the most important things you can do for your claim is making sure you have reached maximum medical improvement before settling your claim or deciding to file your lawsuit. This ensures that there are no more unexpected medical bills that are going to pop up in the future that you would then need to cover out of pocket. By waiting until you are as recovered as possible, you can be sure that your settlement package will cover all of the injury related medical expenses and any good attorney will make sure you reach MMI before moving forward.
While you are recovering and finishing up your treatments, your attorney will be working hard to gather evidence and put together a rock solid case on your behalf. They will gather video evidence, photos, witness testimony, police reports, medical records, expert reports, and may even go back to the scene of the accident to look at skid marks, speed limits, traffic signs and more if needed. In some cases your attorney may even bring in accident recreation experts to prove how the accident took place and who’s fault it was.
Once your lawyer has all of the evidence, they can start to work on proving who was at fault for the accident. They do this by proving that the other person had a duty of care which means there was a law they needed to follow or standard of what a normal person would do in that situation. Then they need to prove that the other party breached that duty of care which means they broke a law or acted in a way that a reasonable person would not have in that same situation. Next they have to prove that the other party’s actions were a direct cause of the accident that caused you injuries. Finally, the accident and subsequent injuries need to have cost the plaintiff damages such as monetary costs or pain and suffering. This is a key aspect of every claim and proving fault must be done very well or you could also be held liable which can completely ruin your claim.
In most injury claims, there are insurance companies involved. This means complicated insurance policies and figuring out what bills are covered and which ones aren’t. This process gets very messy and the insurance companies always try to lowball their way out of any large payments, so make sure you have a qualified attorney working for you so they can handle this part for you and make sure the insurance company isn’t getting a free pass at your expense.
Each lawsuit is different and they all require a unique approach to get the best results. Once your lawyer knows all of the details of the case, they will formulate a specific strategy for your case that they think will help them get the best possible settlement for you. This could mean going about the claim in various different ways depending on how the insurance company or opposing parties have reacted to you being represented by an attorney in the matter. Let your lawyer figure out which path they think is best and then go over your options once they have a few good paths to success.
The compensation package you receive can get very tricky to calculate once you start getting into non-economic damages. Luckily, your personal injury attorney will be well versed in calculating your economic damages as well as your non-economic damages so that they can request a fair amount for settlement. The amount you ask for can set the tone for the case because if you come in looking for way too much, the other side already knows you have unrealistic expectations and may push to go to trial or use outside mediators much quicker than if you would have started with a reasonable compensation amount. This is where having a seasoned attorney can make a big difference.
Once everything has been calculated and you have an evidence based claim ready to go, it’s time for your lawyers to start sending out demand letters to the opposing parties. These letters outline everything in the case as a means to prove why you are asking for the compensation package that you are presenting to them.
Now it’s time to negotiate back and forth. It is rare that injury lawsuits come to a close without at least 2 rounds of negotiations because the insurance companies always want to get out of there with the least amount of money out of pocket. So depending on the situation, this can take quite some time and multiple rounds of negotiations to come to an agreement. The negotiations may also include proving one side of the story better so that each party can agree on a percentage of fault for each party or anything along those lines. Negotiations aren’t just about compensation, the details of the accident and how it started also must be agreed upon before money becomes the topic on the table.
During negotiations and working with the opposing party to come to an agreement on how the accident happened, your attorney will always work to get rid of any blame on your part if they can to ensure that your percentage of fault is as low as possible. This keeps your compensation package as high as possible which is always the goal. Without an attorney on your side, it can be very easy to make a small mistake that could end up costing you tens of thousands of dollars, so always enlist the help of an experienced personal injury attorney before handling any injury claim.
When both sides of the lawsuit can’t come to an agreement on who was at fault, how much to settle for, details of the accident or anything else, the lawsuit will either get a non-biased third party to help with negotiations or it will go to trial and be presented in front of a judge or jury. If this happens, then you will definitely want to have an attorney with trial experience on your side because without that experience, they could do some damage to your case. Trials take a lot more work than just settlement negotiations and they can also make even the best attorneys look foolish because one small mistake can flip the case on it’s head. This is why many attorneys push to settle instead, because anything can happen at trial and it may turn out to be worse than the offer you had before you went to trial.
Once everything has been agreed upon, there will be long and intricately detailed contracts that specify how much compensation there will be, payment terms and much more. You will also be signing this with an acknowledgement that the case is closed and cannot be reopened after the settlement, so make sure you are completely happy with the terms before you sign on the dotted line. Your lawyer will handle all of this for you and explain all the details of your repayment structure to you so you understand exactly how and when you will be getting your compensation.
At Rector Stuzynski LLC, our lawyers specialize in personal injury law and we work on these cases every day. We know all the tricks the insurance companies use to take advantage of you and we negate them at every turn. From start to finish, we have nailed down the process so that we are always prepared and always have the best possible strategy for a favorable outcome. Our law firm has an extensive list of raving reviews from our happy clients because we don’t just say we can get results, we actually deliver. Don’t settle for less, settle for the best by working with our compassionate team of attorneys. Give us a call for a free consultation on your case 24/7 or stop by our office in Colorado Springs to speak with us in person.
We serve clients injured in slip & fall accidents anywhere throughout the state of Colorado, but we focus on residents of these areas: Colorado Springs, Manitou Springs, Fountain, Briargate, Monument, Black Forest, Pueblo, Canon City, Larkspur, Security-Widefield, Peyton, Falcon, Calhan, Castle Rock, Teller County, El Paso County, Elbert County, Park County, Douglas County and beyond.
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