One thing you may not know is that many lawyers who advertise on TV don’t have any courtroom experience. They may advertise for personal injury, car wrecks, trucking cases, traumatic brain injuries, mesothelioma claims, claims involving children, or maritime — but they really don’t have experience in those areas of the law, and even if they do, most of their experience will be in settling cases for pennies on the dollar.
Insurance companies know who those inexperienced lawyers are and they KNOW they will settle without going to court. They know that most lawyers don’t have the resources or the war chest or the bank roll to afford the cost of hiring experts and enduring the work, the time and the expenses. They don’t have on-staff investigators. They don’t have experts that they can call on to help prepare to prosecute the case or counter a defense and go strong against the other side.
They don’t have the experience and do not know how to be prepared for technical cases involving 18 wheeler and tractor trailers or industrial work sites or understand the dangers and rules including The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) rules and regulations for the safe operations of forklifts or backhoes or what records to look for. They don’t have expertise and knowledge of interstate or intrastate trucking rules and federal motor carrier regulations. They don’t have experience with life care planners or vocational rehab suppliers or medical illustrations or economist
A lawsuit is like a war and most lawyers don’t have the experience or the money or the resources or the guts or the skill to go out and recover for you. If you hire the wrong lawyer, the opposing counsel is going to secretly laugh at them. If you hire the wrong lawyer, your recovery is going to go down by tenfold.
If you hire the wrong lawyer, you may lose and get no recovery and no money If you hire the wrong lawyer, you may not have someone who is willing to go the distance and to stand up before the judge and the jury and ask for a fair recovery for you and your family.
This is particularly true for people who have been catastrophically injured who deserve a full recovery for the harms and losses suffered.
An attorney has to be able to stand in front of a jury and be competent and confident to ask for millions of dollars with a straight face and to be sincere. And if you don’t get the full recovery possible then the at-fault party, the defendant, and the insurance companies don’t end up paying for your medical bills. You end up either having to pay for everything out-of-pocket and drain your savings, or go through Medicaid or Medicare and the general public will have to pay for it or you don’t get the treatment at all.
The at-fault party, the defendant and the insurance company should pay for your damages and medical bills, Not You!
If you don’t hire the right lawyer, you could end up having a case dragging on for years and take ten times as long because they don’t know how to push the case. They don’t know how to get into the court room. They don’t know how to get before a jury. And if you don’t have the right lawyer the insurance company isn’t going to be concerned that you’re going to get a big jury verdict and a judgment against them.
It’s like hiring a soldier that doesn’t have a gun… the other side isn’t going to be afraid, they aren’t going to pay a fair settlement.
Coming soon.. New Revised client guide – Winning in Court & 21 Questions You Must Ask Before Hiring A Lawyer
There are so many things that you MUST know in order to make sure you’re hiring the right lawyer. Without knowing the Right questions to ask, you will only get as much justice as you can afford. And that’s what this guide does for you… it spells out Twenty-One Of The Right Questions. It helps you to ask the hard questions and get ALL of the answers you need to make an informed, knowledgeable decision — and Confidently hire the right lawyer.
If it’s a criminal case and you’ve hired the wrong lawyer, an innocent person may go to jail. If you are going through a divorce and you’ve hired the wrong lawyer, the other spouse may get custody or they may get the bulk of your assets. If you are purchasing real estate and you’ve hired the wrong lawyer you may not get the right title insurance, or the right disclosures, or the right surveys done. If you’ve got a worker’s compensation claim, you might not get all of your benefits or your full disability. If it’s Social Security, you may not get all of your past benefits.
There are so many things that a lawyer must be able to do – and this guide will help you find an experienced lawyer who DOES IT BEST!
Just because a lawyer has experience with a car wreck doesn’t mean he knows what to do in a tractor trailer case with duplicate log books, black boxes, catastrophic injuries, and federal motor carrier regulations. Just because he settles a tractor trailer claim doesn’t mean he knows how to pierce the corporate veil and find all the available insurance.
Is there under insurance coverage? Is there an umbrella policy? Is it covered under the family purpose doctrine? Is the wreck within the scope and course of the defendant’s employment? Is it a negligent hiring and retention claim?
Just because an attorney receives a settlement offer doesn’t meant hey knows how to recognize a traumatic brain injury — especially if it’s seemingly mild and goes un-diagnosed in the emergency room. Emergency room personnel are concerned with acute and urgent matters.
Often hidden or lesser injuries are not recognized in that busy environment. If they (your attorney) doesn’t have the connections, he/she won’t know how to hire the right experts. If he doesn’t have the money, he can’t afford the right experts. If he doesn’t have experience with claimants who are under-insured, he can’t get you the medical treatments, diagnostic testing and long term care that you need, including surgery.
There are so many landmines out there; that if you don’t know the correct answers to the 21 questions in this guide, you are going to constantly worry about the lawyer you hired. Do they understand the extent of your injuries? Can they make a case for the compensation you require? Will they demand justice and stop at nothing to get you the financial recovery that you need?
A lawyer has to know the law, and they have to know about liability so they can win the case. They have to know about damages, they have to know about medical procedures, and they have to know about maintenance and proper use of the equipment or vehicle that caused the injury. Just because a lawyer has accepted an insurance settlement offer on a car wreck doesn’t mean he’s prepared to investigate, depose witnesses, gather expert testimony, and prove liability in a case where a forklift crushes a man to death.
Just because he had a forklift case doesn’t mean he knows the regulations of backup alarms on a backhoe.
There is so much legal, technical, medical, and procedural knowledge necessary to become an experienced personal injury trial lawyer that you can’t just rely on some silly TV commercial for your future, for your life, and for your family. In negotiating a fair recovery you must understand a mouse won’t get a fair deal from a cat. You must have a strong legal team. If an insurance adjuster knows that if they don’t pay your attorney the maximum amount of coverage that is available and their only remaining choice is to go to trial and lose on an excess verdict; they usually take the safest route and pay a full settlement.
There is the art of negotiation. If an insurance adjuster knows that they have two choices, either 1) pay you the maximum amount of money, or 2) go to trial and get their butts kicked — then they’re going to pay the maximum amount of money. But if they know that your lawyer has no trial experience, and they have never selected a jury or won a case… and if they know your lawyer has no funds to bring in experts, and to get you medical treatment, to prove fault or liability then they are not t going to pay you top dollar – they are going to pay you pennies on the dollar.
Did you know that insurance companies keep track records on lawyers? When they pick up the phone they know all the stats on your lawyer. They know what kind of results they have gotten. They keep records of settlements they have paid out to him/her before.
There are records of what he’s been paid by other insurance companies. They know what his jury verdicts are… and they rate these lawyers. If they get some C or D level lawyer that’s never even gotten a sizable recovery or if the lawyer has no rating such as a Martindale Hubbell Peer Review, or an Avvo rating, or a jury verdict – then they think that this lawyer is a clown and give them no respect!
And you are going to be shorted – but you will never know that! All you know is that you are going to walk away with what you thought was a fair amount of money — which quickly runs out. And then you have no money to replace your lost income. You have no money to pay your medical bills in the future. You have no money for your education and your kids’ education. You’ll end up like 95% of all people that win a lawsuit, win a lottery, or inherit money. If your payout is not properly structured, you’ll end up broke within 12 to 18 months.
Once the case is over, does your lawyer know how to handle subrogation and rights of reimbursement?
Do they know how to set up annuities and structures which guarantee the future payments of Section 130 Structured Settlements so that your money grows tax free – and so that your money is protected from other people?
There are so many elements from negotiating the case, from proving liability, from being a threat to the other side, from being able to fight and get justice, for being able to help you once you win the case. There is so much that goes into being a good lawyer.
Did you know? There there’s no system out there that can guarantee you finding the right attorney for you. That is why you need to ask the right questions — these 21 questions in this guide.
Get the right answers and find out who is an experienced trial lawyer and not just some inexperienced attorney trying to make a quick fee or easy money at your expense.
At the Spiva Law Group we strive for Service, Strength and Results!
Make It A Great Day!!
Howard Spiva
A Proud supporter of
The Justice for Children Foundation
www.headsinhelmets.com
Children’s injuries are no accident
Spiva Law Group
Trial Lawyers (Please note we moved on Jan 1, 2015)
1137 Mohawk Street
Savannah, Ga. 31419
(912) 920-2000
www.spivalaw.com
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