How To Find a Lawyer To Represent You After an Accident
Finding the right legal help can be difficult, especially if you’ve never worked with a lawyer before. Whether your accident occurred as a result of a negligent motorist, or you’re having some complications after delivery, you want to ensure that the personal injury lawyer you hire is the best for you. If you’ve been struggling to find an attorney that’s right for you, here’s a quick guide you can always refer to.
Referrals
Word of mouth is a very effective way of finding new service providers, so if you have any friends or family members who’ve recently had personal injury cases of their own, ask them to refer you to the personal injury lawyers they used. Ask about their experience working with the lawyer, for instance, was the lawyer easily available to discuss the details of their case? Were they professional? If they had a positive experience with the attorney, add this recommendation to your list of potential lawyers.
Local Bar Associations
As your list of potential personal injury attorneys grows go online and research each one of them. Every state has its bar association, so if your accident occurred in the Denver area, for instance, the Denver Bar Association website can help you find a Denver accident lawyer. Through this resource, you can look up their licenses, their years of experience in handling personal injury claims, inquire about their bar status, and find out if they’ve had any disciplinary issues raised against them.
Besides offering legal aid services, resources like Nolo, AllLaw, and LawHelp also have a ton of information on personal injury lawyers in your area. Their case evaluation and chat features can help you learn more about your preferred attorney’s legal background. Howard Fensterman, for instance, is a rather well-known and often looked-up family law and settlement attorney. A quick Nolo or LawHelp search will show you that as a managing partner at Abrams, Fensterman, Fensterman, Eisman, Greenberg, Formato & Einiger, LLP, his experience in handling settlement negotiations is unmatched.
Firm Size
As you interview attorneys, another important question to ask is who’ll be handling your case. Make sure that the lawyer you speak to will be the same one handling your case. Ask about their work hours and availability. By availability we mean, what mode of communication works best for them, for instance, are they easily reachable on phone throughout the day, or do emails work better. Also, if emails work best, how fast can they get back to you? Also, consider who picks up your calls, if it’s a secretary or paralegal, they may not be able to give your case the level of attention it needs.
Lawyer Fees
Most personal injury lawyers offer free initial consultations so take advantage of this session to ask about their lawyer fees to avoid any surprises. Some lawyers work on a contingency fee basis, meaning that they receive their payment from a percentage of the settlement. Your lawyer may use a term like “no fee if no recovery” when referring to the contingency basis payment mode so make sure you ask them to explain what they mean by this, exactly.
In some cases, you may not get the chance to have an in-person consultation with your attorney before hiring them. However, a phone call or email exchange can help you get an idea of the lawyer’s personality and professionalism. Given how personal your case likely is, you’ll need to have a great rapport with your lawyer. Besides this, your injury case isn’t something that should be taken lightly, which is why you need a lawyer with years of experience in handling negligence, medical malpractice, car accident, workplace injury, and other personal injuries claims.