9 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Personal Injury Lawyer

There are over 1.3 million lawyers in the United States right now, and of those lawyers, many of them practice personal injury law. You've got the Texas Hammer, Alabama Hammer, Kentucky Hammer, Georgia Hammer, Illinois Hammer, Lowell the Hammer Stanley, New York's infamous Jim the Hammer Shapiro, New York's comically tiny Hammer, Burt Parnell. Then you've got the Law Lion, Law Tigers, Law Bears, Law Dog, Law Boss, the Strong Arm, to name just a few. With so many options to choose from, how do you know who is the right attorney to hire for your claim for your personal injury case? Well, in this video, I'm going to share with you nine questions that you should ask the personal injury lawyer before hiring them. Now, if you have been injured in a car accident by someone else's carelessness, you may need to file a personal injury claim for your damages. If that's the case, you may want to consider hiring a personal injury lawyer to help you with your claim. But it seems like there's a personal injury lawyer on every billboard, bus, and park bench. So how do you distinguish between the good ones and the bad ones? Well, before you hire a personal injury lawyer to represent you, you're going to want to meet with them in person at their office if possible, or at the very least, have a video conference call with them so that you can speak to them face to face. During your meeting, take note of things like, is the lawyer patiently listening to you, or are they trying to push through and rush through the meeting like they have somewhere more important to be or something more important to do? Is the lawyer professional in their appearance and demeanor and in interacting with you, or are they unprofessional and somewhat rude? What about their staff? Does the same thing apply to them? Does their office appear to be messy and cluttered or tidy and organized? Are their case files scattered everywhere? Are the phones ringing off the hook, but it seems like there's nobody there to answer them? You're not looking so much at whether the office is lavishly appointed with nice furniture and art, but you're looking for a professional and organized work environment. Does the lawyer seem knowledgeable when answering the questions that you have for them? Before we get into my list of the nine things to ask a personal injury lawyer before hiring them, let me give a quick disclaimer. This video is not legal advice. It is for educational purposes only. If you've got a question about a personal injury matter, talk to a lawyer in your state. Now with that out of the way, let's get into those nine questions. Starting with question number one, ask them, how long have you been practicing personal injury law? Number two, do you focus exclusively on personal injury cases or do you handle other types of cases as well? Number three, do you have experience working on personal injury cases like mine? Common types of personal injury cases include car accidents, commercial vehicle accidents, pedestrian accidents, motorcycle accidents, bike accidents, slip and fall, trip and fall, a work injury where your employer does not have a subscription to workers comp insurance, rig explosions. The list goes on and on. There are some lawyers who specialize in a particular type of personal injury claim. Number four, what's your track record with your recent personal injury cases? What type of personal injury case was it? What was the outcome in that case? How long did it take to resolve? Did the case settle without the need for a lawsuit? How much did the case settle for? Now, they may not share all of this information to protect client confidentiality, but it does not hurt to ask. Moving on to question number five, will you be handling my case personally or do you hand my case off to a staff member or another lawyer? This is important because a lot of the larger advertising plaintiff's firms that you see on billboards, TVs, and buses, the lawyer who is the face of that law firm is not actually going to be doing any legal work on your case. The odds are they're going to hand it off to a junior lawyer or even a paralegal or staff member who will do the majority of work on your case. Now, that's not necessarily a terrible thing because these people know what they're doing and it is not rocket science, quite frankly. However, you want to make sure that if your case gets closer into litigation and certainly a trial, that you have a more experienced lawyer who has hands on the file, has hands on your case that you can get in touch with and that is actually moving that case forward once it reaches the litigation stage. Now, moving on to question number six, who will be my point of contact at your law firm if I have a question about my case? Question number seven, how long should I expect to wait to hear back from you if I leave a message? This is another major issue with some of the larger plaintiff's firms. Sometimes you can leave a message and then wait and not hear back for a week. And so I would recommend avoiding a law firm like that. Question number eight, how are you paid? Now, for most plaintiff's law firms that do personal injury work, this will be a contingency fee, which means it is a percentage of whatever they recover for you. If there is no recovery under a contingency fee, then you don't end up paying anything to the lawyer and the lawyer will typically eat the cost that they have incurred in pursuing your claim, however far they went with that. And then finally, number nine, will you get my express permission before accepting a settlement or settling my claim? This is a red flag if a lawyer is not willing to consult with their client and get their express permission before settling their claim. So run for the hills if a lawyer is kind of sketchy about committing to making sure that they get your express permission before settling your claim on your behalf. That's all I've got for you today. If you like this video, make sure to let me know by giving it a like. If you want to see more videos like this, then hit that subscribe button below and turn the bell notification icon on. And of course, as always, thank you for watching.