If you’ve looked for a lawyer on the Internet, you’ve probably found thousands of them. In California alone, you can find about 200,000 attorneys, and the population continues to grow. While many lawyers want to help you get the compensation you deserve from your insurance company or a government agency, other lawyers just want your business and don’t care where you end up.
If you decide to hire a lawyer, then you need to spend time talking to different lawyers and comparing their skills with your needs. Some of the easiest places to look for lawyers include advertisements on TV, radio and the Internet. However, when lawyers seem to pursue you and everybody else indiscriminately, then you should question how well the lawyer can represent you personally.
A better way to look for a good personal injury attorney includes asking friends, relatives and co-workers about lawyers whom they have worked with or have heard positive things about. Also, you can check the California state bar, which provides public information on every California personal injury attorney in the state. The state bar also has information on choosing a California personal injury attorney that will work best for your situation. You can also check out your county bar association, which will have more information on referral services and the specific qualifications of a California personal injury attorney.
But no matter what anybody else tells you, you should always go see the lawyer for yourself, and discuss your problem and how he or she would handle it. Some questions to ask, for instance, include the length of the lawyer’s experience in your specific situation (eg. medical malpractice, toxic exposure, etc.) Also ask who will assume responsibility for your case; sometimes, lawyers will hand easier cases down to less experienced co-workers. After discussing what you hope to get out of the case, then you can decide on your own which attorney seems best capable of handling your situation.
Keep in mind that every case doesn’t necessarily require the help of a lawyer. Maybe you can argue your case on your own, depending on the complications. If you can handle your claim by yourself, you will probably get more compensation because you won’t have to pay the lawyer’s fees, which can cost upwards of 40% for many cases. Cases such as those involving car accidents with no severe or permanent injuries, home accidents and accidents with defective products often only require minimal negotiation that you can handle on your own. Usually, if you write a few letters and make a few phone calls, common sense will govern the process. In addition, you know the most about the details of your accident because only you had first-hand involvement.
In other cases, however, you will probably need a lawyer to help because of the greater complications involved. For example, cases with long-term injuries, medical malpractice and toxic exposure involve complex legal rules and can require a lot of evidence to prove. The greater amount of money your injuries deserve, the greater range of compensation insurance companies will try to haggle, and a California personal injury attorney knows the details of the process to present a convincing argument on your behalf.
By Lisa Zyga