Did you know that there are at least 1.3 million lawyers across the United States?
Being a lawyer is a prestigious yet incredibly challenging career. Due to how complex law is in the United States, the vast majority of lawyers focus on a specific subset of law. One of the most common types of lawyer you will see is a personal injury lawyer.
A personal injury lawyer handles cases related to a personal injury claim. This often has to do with filing suit against a company or individual who caused you injury. In either case, it provides a person with an invaluable resource when navigating tricky legal waters. You can even claim for bicycle accidents providing that you have the right person on your side.
Keep reading as we discuss everything you can expect when hiring a personal injury lawyer.
What Sort of Cases Does a Personal Injury Lawyer Deal With?
In the vast majority of cases, a personal injury lawyer is helping you with the process of claiming damages from someone. A common example of this is an employee that suffers an injury while on the job. For example, a warehouse worker falls off the loading bay due to a lack of OSHA standard protections.
In cases like these, the afflicted can usually demand compensation from two main sources. They can demand it from their employer, and/or their insurance provider.
Of course, companies being what they are will attempt to get out of paying for this compensation. It hurts their bottom line if they have to shell out several thousand dollars for an employee’s injury. So instead, they play games and try to wear out their employee’s patience and never pay out.
The same usually happens with insurance companies as well. Ironically, you can pay hundreds of dollars every month for an insurance policy that gives you nothing in return. Insurance companies, like employers, do everything in their power to avoid spending.
This is where a personal injury lawyer comes in. The best personal injury lawyer has played this game many times before. They understand what tactics employers and insurance companies will use to reduce liability. They know what they can do to force the hand of either the employer or the insurance company–including involving the law.
How Does a Personal Injury Lawyer Do Their Job?
The biggest difficulty with obtaining a personal injury settlement is assigning fault. It’s no easy task to determine who is truly at fault. Obviously, the employer or the insurance company will say that the employee was at fault.
To prove that this is not the case, a personal injury lawyer will need extensive evidence. Far more than just the say-so of the employee that suffered the injury. The problem is, this determination of fault can have a wide variety of sources.
Here are some of the common sources of evidence a personal injury lawyer can use:
- police reports
- medical documents and bills
- surveillance footage
- photographs
- statements from witnesses, such as coworkers
All of this evidence is well and good, but the challenge comes when obtaining it. Lawyers will have to dig through records of all kinds. They may quickly discover that certain entities make it difficult to obtain the records they need.
This is especially the case with the company itself. They often have their own legal team that may try to obfuscate evidence or impede an investigation. It’s a personal injury lawyer’s job to cut through all of this and find conclusive evidence.
Benefits of Using a Personal Injury Lawyer
There are too many benefits to name here. For starters, a personal injury lawyer is your guide to the complexity of the law. Since you likely don’t have a legal degree, you won’t understand how things work.
The next big benefit is experience. A personal injury lawyer does this on a daily basis, so they know exactly how to proceed. Impediments that might stump you likely won’t stump a personal injury lawyer.
Additionally, they provide a form of moral support. In many cases, the afflicted do not have a support system in place.
They may have suffered alienation due to lost wages and the overall stress of an injury. A lawyer is on your side through thick and thin until they win your case.
Many people are concerned about the cost of lawyers, and for that reason choose not to hire one. But luckily, many lawyers do their work with the hope of compensation in the end. They will not charge you a cent until they have won your case.
The great part about this is you may never have to pay a cent in lawyer fees. The compensation from your employer or from the insurance company may cover lawyer fees. So your lawyer gets paid, and you don’t have to suffer financially to do so.
Does a Personal Injury Lawyer Need to Take You to Court?
People often think of lawyers as spending most of their time in the courtroom. Contrary to popular belief, many lawyers do their work beyond. Taking your case to court is a last resort, and there is much that they can do before you reach that point.
Many lawyers will use the threat of legal action to prevent any legal action from happening in the first place. If they can scare your company with the potential for a case, then your company may kowtow to avoid that. Thus, a lawyer’s job is often far more about persuasion than twisting someone’s arm.
Find a Personal Injury Lawyer Today
A personal injury lawyer helps people win a personal injury claim, whether against their employer or the insurance company. Most of a personal injury lawyer’s job is obtaining evidence to prove fault. In many cases, there is no need to take things to court.
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