Picking The Right Personal Injury Lawyer
Trying to find a lawyer under normal circumstances in itself
can be a tough task to undertake. It can become even tougher if you or someone
you love has been in an accident and needs the assistance of a personal injury
lawyer. Finding this kind of a lawyer will take some research and patience.
One of the first things you can do is to contact the
American Bar Association. They will be able to give you a list of referrals for
lawyers in your local area. If you don't want to call them, just go to their
website and click on their icon that says Find Legal Help and then just click
on your state.
Also make sure to approach fellow employees, your neighbors,
family and friends and ask if they know of any good personal injury lawyers.
Not only might they be able to give you a name, they also can give you more
client side information than you would get from the lawyer. You'll be able to
find out if they were competent, if they returned calls within a fair amount of
time, if they were friendly and more.
Should it happen that you already have a lawyer for some
other business, feel free to ask them for any referrals. Just because they
don't deal with personal injury does not mean they don't know those who do.
Since they went to school with other lawyers they more than likely may have a
friend or two who work with cases like yours.
After you have the information and names you need, start
calling the different lawyers. Most will offer you a free consultation and this
is something you should take advantage of. Use these appointments to interview
the lawyer. Find out if they are familiar with your kind of case, what their
case history is and any other information that might pertain to your case. Ask
them to call you with any information that they don't give you during the
appointment.
Before you are finished with the appointment, don't forget
to ask the what their fee is. More often than not, a personal injury lawyer
won't charge a penny until you have received some sort of a settlement and then
they will take their fee from that. However, if the case doesn't look like
there is going to be a big settlement then you will need to see if they can
offer you a fee schedule that you can agree to pay. Whatever you do, make sure
you always get everything in writing.
Look at all of your notes and compare the different
information on the lawyers you talked to. By doing this you should be able to
get your list down to a couple. Then look at the two of them and decide upon
which one you think you could get along with better. Since there will be a lot
of time spent with them, you have to be able to get along with them.
Patience is very important when looking for any kind of
lawyer. Understand they probably have heavy case loads and it could be a little
bit of time before they can clear their schedule to get you in. You also
shouldn't be surprised if your first call ends up coming from their assistant.
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