Choosing Your Attorney After You've Been Injured

By John S. Mordecai

I don’t advertise and I’ve never represented insurance companies. New clients come to me because former clients trust me to help their family and friends.

People trust me to get them through tough times.

Choosing the right lawyer for you is essential. When you need someone to enforce your rights and to champion your interests, I will help you.

Your lawyer not only needs to be preeminent in the practice of personal injury law but must genuinely care about you and your plight. He has a duty to achieve the best possible result for you while guiding you through each step of the process.

No one is ever prepared when an injury occurs, so the attorney the attorney you choose has to be. Car and truck crashes and slip and falls happen in a split second but can change lives forever. Injury victims must deal with pain, suffering, inconvenience, and lost income – not only temporarily but frequently over the course of a lifetime.

From a moral standpoint, careless drivers, corporations and their insurance companies should take full responsibility when their negligence causes injury or death. Unfortunately, they do not voluntarily do so. You have legal rights and a skilled personal injury lawyer can enforce them. 

When you choose me as your lawyer, you’ll not only get the help you deserve; you’ll get more. You’ll get a determined and compassionate advocate and the skill accumulated in over 30 years of dedication and experience; a lawyer who will relate to you and in whom you can comfortably confide.

You have one chance to get it right. Here are some things to consider:

1.   Look at the Results Achieved in Cases Essentially Like Yours.

Some lawyers need to blow their own horns, but some large money recoveries may be misleading and not relate to your type of injury. Select an attorney who has had numerous excellent results - not just with your kind of accident but with your kind of injury. Your lawyer must understand the muscles, bones and nerves involved in your injuries, the pain they cause and the ways they affect your ability to function. So, if you have shoulder or knee pain following a mishap, look for the results achieved in cases which involve those injuries.

Your injury and its effect on your life is unique to you. Your case is unique and your attorney’s skill, commitment and experience should be too. 

2.    TV and Radio Ads Are No Way to Choose Your Lawyer.

Non-stop advertising is how the money-driven lawyers make their run at you. Advertising lawyers have “high volume” law practices and take as many cases as their advertising dollars can attract. You’ve heard TV lawyers boast about their thousands and thousands of clients; they just keep hiring case non-lawyer "case managers" to handle the overflow. As a result, each lawyer in those firms may have 500 or more clients at one time. A good question to ask yourself is: will I and my family be better off when my case is one of thousands of cases in firm which continuously advertises to get thousands of more cases?

Just being on TV doesn’t make anyone an effective lawyer. What really counts is the actual skill, experience and commitment of the specific lawyer you choose – not the number of times you see a lawyer on TV or on the side of a bus.

3.   Specifically Select Your Lawyer - Don’t Accept a Stranger Chosen for You.

You don’t get to choose the lawyer who will actually represent you if you retain a TV lawyer or a “mega firm”. Instead, a stranger will assign a non-lawyer case manager or a lawyer who you know nothing about to handle your case.

With those firms, you may never even meet the lawyer who’s supposed to represent you. Odds are the advertiser you see on TV doesn’t actually carry a caseload of his own clients. The combined experience of all the attorneys in a firm doesn’t help you; the actual experience of your attorney is what counts.

·         Don't be arbitrarily assigned to an attorney who may be a novice and may have little or none of the experience you need.

·         You may never even meet the lawyer who is supposed to be representing you; he or she may not even know your name.

·         Your case might not even handled by a lawyer – but by a non-lawyer case manager.

·         Appearing on T.V. doesn’t make a lawyer caring or effective; it doesn’t make a lawyer a good choice for you.

You should be the one choosing the person you decide to trust and confide in. It's your right to determine whether you can trust him "to do what it takes" to get the best possible result for you. Personal injury and wrongful death claims can be protracted and retaining control over the decision of exactly who will lead you on that journey couldn’t be more important.

4.   Choose a Lawyer You Feel Comfortable Confiding In.

Personal injury law is exactly that: personal.

Choosing a lawyer should create a relationship of caring professionalism. There is no way make up for a lack of connection and personality that just aren't there. Pay attention to how you feel when talking with him.

Because personal injury claims concern your body and medical history, some sensitive information will need to be discussed. Your lawyer should be able to easily relate to you and you should be able to do the same. 

You have to know that your lawyer is not only is committed to achieving the best possible result for your case but cares about you. Every case is different so it important for injury victims to select a lawyer who is ready and willing to take an individual approach to each client's representation. Your lawyer should fight and care for you every step of the way.

 5.   Your Initial Consultation Should Be With the Attorney Who Will Actually Represent You.

Any personal injury attorney worthy of your consideration will take all the time needed to to get to know you and discuss the merits of your case; a brief “meet and greet” is no way to get to know a new client.

Be less concerned with the opulence of the office than you are with an attorney’s experience and results. Pay attention to the demeanor of the attorney and the staff since you’re going to be sharing a lot of time with them. Pay attention to how you feel when talking with them. Your attorney should take your calls. Are you willing to settle for a case manager every time you call?  Depending on the case, your attorney may need to retain expert witnesses and private investigators. Make sure that the firm you choose has the resources required to successfully prosecute your case. If not volunteered, ask about the attorney’s experience and results he or she has achieved for other clients in the past. 

6.   Choose a Lawyer That Only Practices Personal Injury Law.

You should avoid law firms and attorneys that handle cases outside of personal injury and wrongful death matters; such matters may include divorces, criminal law, business interruption claims, lemon law and employment law.

Personal injury law is unique and the knowledge and experience accumulated over decades counts. Your attorney should have years of experience in routinely, year in and year out, representing people who were injured in essentially the same way you were.

There are numerous ways people become injury victims: car, truck and motorcycle crashes, slip-and-falls, animal attacks, medical malpractice and more. Every case has different causes, different injuries and different defendants. 

Your lawyer should have a decades long and deep understanding of your specific injury and how those injuries affect lives. Your lawyer not only needs to be preeminent in the practice of personal injury law but needs to know human anatomy, the effects of injuries on the structures of the body, medical terminology and more.

John Mordecai is a Jacksonville, Florida personal injury attorney who has successfully handled cases for thousands of people from all walks of life with recovery amounts for individual clients of over $5,000,000.00.  To learn more, go to http://mordecailaw.com