Why You Don't Always Need to Hire a Personal Injury Lawyer!
Ok, you’ve been hurt in a car wreck or have sustained some other type of injury. There isn’t a lot of visible damage and you really just have one or two minor injuries that required you to miss a day or two of work and maybe you had a couple hundred dollars damage to your property.
You’ve seen all the advertisements on television from the “heavy hitters” and “one call that’s all” guys and you’re wondering if you should call one of these personal injury lawyers to help you.
Should you? Do you need to hire a lawyer?
Nope, nada, nein, nin, NO.
You probably shouldn’t IF the injury is very small and limited, and you are good at negotiating, keeping track of deadlines, doing light paperwork and are willing to learn a little bit about your injury and the claims process.
That’s right, I, James K. Ferrell, a personal injury lawyer is suggesting that you not call a lawyer. Sounds crazy doesn’t it. But here are the facts. Most of these attorneys you see advertising on television don’t really care about your claim. And most of these law firms don’t even have a lawyer negotiate your claim with the insurance adjuster. The smalls claims are usually just relegated to a paralegal, or assistant.
In a recent conversation with one of my good friends, Katie, who is a claims adjuster for one of the largest insurance companies in the world, we were talking about these television law firms (from now one I'll just be calling them "injury law mills") and how they handle small claims for their clients. We were both discussing how most small claims could be handled easily by an informed person without the need for an attorney. And how this would usually be better than hiring an attorney.
As an adjuster who works with thousands of claims each year, and hundreds of attorneys, paralegals and assistants Katie had this to say about these "injury law mills".
“Most of their attorneys at these firms don’t give a cr_p at all, they just want to settle and move on.”
Is this the type of representation that you want? Probably not. Can you do just as good by yourself? You betcha!
If your claim is just for very minor injuries and only a small amount of property damage has occured then by all means you can handle the claim by yourself. (Personal injury lawyers across Memphis, Tennessee; Mississippi and the Midsouth will be sending me hate mail for saying that.)
How do you do this? Look for more information in one of my upcoming posts where I walk you through the claims process for a small injury.
If you'd like more information about how to settle your injury claim or if you need our help with your major claim call us at our Mississippi or Tennessee office today or order our free book "7 Deadly Mistakes That Can KILL Your Memphis Accident Case".
Nice Blog. Just saw a tweet from Kevin O'Keefe. Looks good!