Why you need this guide to hiring a lawyer.
One thing you may not know is that many lawyers who advertise on
TV don't have any courtroom experience. They may advertise for personal
injury, car wrecks, trucking cases, traumatic brain injuries, claims involving children, or maritime — but they really don't have experience in those
areas of the law, and even if they do, most of their experience will be in
settling cases for pennies on the dollar.
Insurance companies know who those inexperienced lawyers are and
they KNOW they will settle without going to court. They know that most lawyers
don't have the resources or the war chest or the bank roll to afford the cost
of hiring experts and enduring the work, the time and the expenses. They don't
have on-staff investigators. They don't have experts that they can call on to
help prepare to prosecute the case or counter a defense and go strong against
the other side.
They don't have the experience and do not know how to be prepared
for technical cases involving 18 wheeler and tractor trailers or industrial
work sites or understand the dangers and rules including The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rules and regulations for
the safe operations of forklifts or backhoes or what records
to look for. They don't have expertise and knowledge of interstate or intrastate
trucking rules and federal motor carrier regulations. They
don't have experience with life care planners or vocational rehab suppliers or
medical illustrations or economist
A lawsuit is like a
war and most lawyers don't have the experience or the money or the resources or
the guts or the skill to go out and recover for you. If you hire the wrong
lawyer, the opposing counsel is going to secretly laugh at them. If you hire
the wrong lawyer, your recovery is going to go down by tenfold.
If you hire the
wrong lawyer, you may lose and get no recovery and no money If you hire the wrong lawyer, you may not have someone who is
willing to go the distance and to stand up before the judge and the jury and ask for a fair recovery for you
and your family.
This is particularly true for people who have been
catastrophically injured who deserve a full recovery for the harms and losses
suffered. An attorney has to be able to stand in front of a jury and be
competent and confident to ask for millions of dollars with a straight face and
to be sincere. And if you don't get the full recovery possible then the
at-fault party, the defendant, and the insurance companies don't end up paying
for your medical bills. You end up either having to pay for everything
out-of-pocket and drain your savings, or go through Medicaid or Medicare and the
general public will have to pay for it or you don’t get the treatment at all. The
at-fault party, the defendant and the insurance company should pay for your
damages and medical bills, NOT YOU!
If you don't hire the right lawyer, you could end up having a case
dragging on for years and take ten times as long because they don't know how to
push the case. They don't know how to get into the court room. They don't know
how to get before a jury. And if you don't have the right lawyer the insurance
company isn't going to be concerned that you're going to get a big jury verdict
and a judgment against them. It's like hiring a soldier that doesn't have a gun... the other
side isn’t going to be afraid, they aren’t going to pay a fair settlement.
There are so many
things that you MUST know in order to make sure you're hiring the right lawyer.
Without knowing the RIGHT questions to ask, you will only get as much justice
as you can afford. And that's what this guide does for you… it spells out TWENTY-ONE
OF THE RIGHT QUESTIONS. It helps you to ask the hard questions and get ALL of
the answers you need to make an informed, knowledgeable decision -- and
CONFIDENTLY hire the right lawyer.
If it’s a criminal
case and you’ve hired the wrong lawyer, an innocent person may go to jail. If
you are going through a divorce and you’ve hired the wrong lawyer, the other
spouse may get custody or they may get the bulk of your assets. If you are
purchasing real estate and you’ve hired the wrong lawyer you may not get the
right title insurance, or the right disclosures, or the right surveys done. If
you’ve got a worker’s compensation claim, you might not get all of your
benefits or your full disability. If it’s Social Security, you may not get all
of your past benefits.
There are so many
things that a lawyer must be able to do – and this guide will help you
find an experienced lawyer who DOES IT
BEST!
Just because a lawyer has experience with a car wreck doesn't mean
he knows what to do in a tractor trailer case with duplicate log books, black
boxes, catastrophic injuries, and federal motor carrier regulations. Just
because he settles a tractor trailer claim doesn't mean he knows how to pierce
the corporate veil and find all the available insurance.
Is there under insurance
coverage? Is there an umbrella policy? Is it covered under the family purpose
doctrine? Is the wreck within the scope
and course of the defendant’s employment? Is it a negligent hiring and
retention claim?
Just because an attorney receives a settlement offer doesn't
meant hey knows how to recognize a traumatic brain injury — especially
if it’s seemingly mild and goes un-diagnosed in the emergency room. Emergency room personnel are concerned with
acute and urgent matters.
Often hidden or lesser injuries are not recognized in
that busy environment. If they (your attorney) doesn't have the connections, he/she won’t
know how to hire the right experts. If he doesn't have the money, he can't
afford the right experts. If he doesn't have experience with claimants who are under-insured, he can't get you the medical treatments, diagnostic testing and
long term care that you need, including surgery.
There are so many landmines out there; that if you don’t know the correct
answers to the 21 questions in this guide, you are going to constantly worry
about the lawyer you hired. Do they understand the extent of your injuries? Can
they make a case for the compensation you require? Will they demand justice and
stop at nothing to get you the financial recovery that you need?
A lawyer has to know the law, and they have to know about
liability so they can win the case. They
have to know about damages, they have to know about medical procedures, and
they have to know about maintenance and proper use of the equipment or vehicle
that caused the injury. Just because a lawyer has accepted an insurance settlement offer
on a car wreck doesn’t mean he's prepared to investigate, depose witnesses,
gather expert testimony, and prove liability in a case where a forklift crushes
a man to death.
Just because he had a forklift case doesn't mean he knows the
regulations of backup alarms on a backhoe.
There is so much legal, technical, medical, and procedural
knowledge necessary to become an experienced personal injury trial lawyer that
you can't just rely on some silly TV commercial for your future, for your life,
and for your family. In negotiating a fair recovery you must understand a mouse won’t
get a fair deal from a cat. You must have a strong legal team. If an insurance
adjuster knows that if they don’t pay your attorney the maximum amount of
coverage that is available and their only remaining choice is to go to trial
and lose on an excess verdict; they usually take the safest route and pay a
full settlement.
There is the art of negotiation. If an insurance adjuster knows
that they have two choices, either 1) pay you the maximum amount of money, or 2)
go to trial and get their butts kicked — then they're going to pay the maximum
amount of money. But if they know that your lawyer has no trial experience, and
they have never selected a jury or won a case… and if they know your lawyer has
no funds to bring in experts, and to get you medical treatment, to prove fault
or liability then they are not t going to pay you top dollar – they are going
to pay you pennies on the dollar.
Did you know that insurance companies keep track records on
lawyers? When they pick up the phone they know all the stats on your lawyer.
They know what kind of results they have gotten. They keep records of
settlements they have paid out to him/her before. There are records of what
he's been paid by other insurance companies. They know what his jury verdicts
are… and they rate these lawyers. If they get some C or D level lawyer that’s
never even gotten a sizable recovery or if the lawyer has no rating such as a Martindale
Hubbell Peer Review, or an Avvo rating, or a jury verdict – then they think that this lawyer is a clown and give them no
respect!
And you are going to be shorted – but you will never know that!
All you know is that you are going to walk away with what you thought was a
fair amount of money — which quickly
runs out. And then you have no money to replace your lost income. You have no
money to pay your medical bills in the future. You have no money for your
education and your kids' education. You'll end up like 95% of all people that
win a lawsuit, win a lottery, or inherit money. If your payout is not properly
structured, you'll end up broke within 12 to 18 months.
Once the case is over, does your lawyer know how to handle
subrogation and rights of reimbursement? Do they know how to set up annuities and
structures which guarantee the future payments of Section 130 Structured
Settlements so that your money grows tax free – and so that your money is
protected from other people?
There are so many elements from negotiating the case, from proving
liability, from being a threat to the other side, from being able to fight and
get justice, for being able to help you once you win the case. There is so much
that goes into being a good lawyer.
Did you know? There there's
no system out there that can guarantee you finding the right attorney for you.
That is why you need to ask the right questions — these 21 questions in this
guide. Get the right answers and find out who is an experienced trial lawyer
and not just some inexperienced attorney trying to make a quick fee or easy
money at your expense.
At the Spiva Law Group we strive for Service, Strength and
Results!
Labels: attorneys, Broken bones, car wreck, children, closed head injuries, death, deaths, federal, law, lawyers, longshoreman, Maritime, military, Serious injury, TBI, Trial Lawyers, trucking, workers compensation
