Why Hire a Lawyer? Can’t I Do This Myself?
If you are injured, hire a lawyer. Generally, insurance companies will take care of property damage to your vehicle without too much fuss. That’s not always the case, but mostly you’ll get your car repaired fairly easily. Things get messy once injuries come into play. With injuries come medical expenses, and medical treatment is expensive. An insurance company exists to make a profit. They only make a profit if they take in more money than they pay out. This leads to one simple truth: insurance companies will do whatever they can to pay you as little as possible.
An insurance company is a sophisticated corporation in a multi-billion dollar industry. They hire professionals who know their business. The insurance company will know what your case is worth. Without a lawyer, you won’t. This will put you at an immediate disadvantage.
Sometimes an insurance company will quickly offer a few thousand dollars to settle your personal injury claim. You may have just been to the hospital, and doctors said your injuries are most likely whiplash, which should resolve after 6-8 weeks. You see an offer that pays your hospital bill and puts few extra hundred dollars in your pocket. Seems like a win at first glance; but, if you accept that quick offer, you’re playing a risky game. Once your case is settled there is no going back for more money if the injuries turn out to be more severe than initially thought. After 8 weeks, you may still be in severe pain. Doctors may only then realize your injuries are more serious than some strained muscles. You could end up with medical bills reaching tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Your claim is also about more than just numbers on a medical bill. It’s about you, your pain, how your injuries have affected your life. Your injuries could affect your work, your social life with friends, even your relationship with your family. If your personal life or work life has been negatively impacted, you are entitled to compensation – something that the insurance company won’t point out to you. Without a lawyer’s experience, you could be leaving money on the table.
Right after your accident, the clock is running. If you wait too long to seek treatment, insurance companies will be quick to point out a “gap in treatment.” They could start arguing that (1) if you could wait a long time to get treatment, maybe you weren’t really that hurt, and (2) did something else happen that caused your pain during that “gap.” Insurance companies will use whatever arguments they can to pay less than what your case is worth. They want to weaken your claim by creating doubt and minimizing your damages.
Insurance companies will want your recorded statement. They will want to ask you questions about what happened, about your injuries, and about whatever else they want to know. They will then try to use this statement against you later on. Get a lawyer to guide you through the process, and to tell the insurance company “no” to requests for information you don’t need to provide.
Insurance companies may even try to use scare tactics against you if they know you are unrepresented. They may tell you they have doctors saying your injuries aren’t related to the accident. Or that they have billing experts who say your bills are unreasonably high and the insurance company isn’t obligated to pay the full bill. They may even tell you that the other driver is saying you are at fault for the accident, but nevertheless they are willing to extend a quick offer “as a courtesy.” All of this is meant to discourage you, to make you think that your case is not valuable, or to just make you give up. A lawyer will help you know which of those statements, if any, are legitimate concerns, and which are disingenuous attempts to scare you into taking less money.
Never underestimate the power of insurance companies to drag out a process until you just want to quit. They hold the money. And they are just fine holding the money for as long as they can. They will drag the process out if they can. They will frustrate you. They will infuriate you. They will make you just want to be done with it. Getting a lawyer to push your case forward is important.
There are many pitfalls in handling your case that a lawyer can handle. The average person isn’t going to know the statute of limitations for their case, but missing it will ruin your case completely. What if the entity that hurt you is a government entity, or a government employee acting in the course and scope of employment? You may need to send a notice to the government entity much earlier than the statute of limitations. Delaying on hiring a lawyer can cause one of these deadlines to pass by, irrevocably damaging your case. Some deadlines, once missed, cannot be fixed. Hire a lawyer to guide you.
Personal injury cases can have a lot of money on the line at a time when you really need it. Insurance companies are not going to take it easy on you. They are a for profit business looking to keep their money in their own accounts. If you have a personal injury case, you can bet that the insurance company will have a professional on their side. So should you.
If you have been injured, be sure to consult with an attorney as soon as possible. Make sure you have proper representation to guide you through this process. Every case is different and comes with its own unique issues. While this article can provide prudent tips, it is no substitute for an attorney guiding you through the nuances of your unique case.
