5 Reasons to Hire a Personal Injury Lawyer

If you’ve been injured in an accident, you may be wondering if it’s worth it to engage the services of a personal injury lawyer. Could you make a successful claim on your own? Would an attorney accomplish anything besides taking some of your well-deserved money? Here are five reasons it’s a good idea to hire a personal injury lawyer rather than try to go it alone.

#1: Experience

Hopefully, you don’t have a lot of experience with personal injury claims or dealing with insurance companies. This is definitely a good thing, but it also means you’ll be pretty clueless if you try to tackle the job of taking on an insurance company by yourself. As you might imagine, an insurance company has an entire team of attorneys at their disposal working for the company’s interest 24/7.

If this is your first trip to the personal injury rodeo, you almost certainly have no idea what deadlines you need to be aware of, what documentation you need to prepare, how to protect your rights, or what your claim is really worth. An experienced personal injury lawyer who deals with these cases every day is going to be able to handle things much more easily, efficiently, and thoroughly than you winging your way through your first case.

#2: Won’t Let the Insurance Companies Take Advantage of You

Remember that an insurance company’s goal is to make money. In order to do this, they need to pay out as little as possible. This means that the insurance company and its team of lawyers are going to be trying to do anything they can to pay you less. They may downplay the severity of your injuries or try to get you to admit that your injuries aren’t that severe, or twist your words to make it seem like you said something along those lines.

The insurance company may even tell you that hiring a personal injury attorney would only slow down the claims process or complicate things. This is because you hiring an attorney is bad — for them. Never forget that the insurance company and its lawyers do not care about your interests or treating you fairly. They are not on your side. They just want you to go away as quickly, quietly, and cheaply as possible.

#3: Avoid Errors

If you’re not familiar with the process of pursuing an injury claim, you might well make a mistake that jeopardizes your claim. An attorney can make sure all your paperwork is squared away properly to preserve your rights and maximize your award.

#4: Help You Get Fair Compensation

A study by the Insurance Research Council found that the percentage of auto injury claimants who hired attorneys has more than doubled in recent decades — and for good reason. Those claimants who were represented by an attorney received an average of 3.5 times the amount of money offered to those without lawyers. More than 85% of total insurance company payouts for bodily injury claims were paid to claimants represented by attorneys.

#5: No Financial Risk to You

Nearly every personal injury lawyer will take your case on a contingency basis. This means your lawyer only gets paid if they win money for you. In the event you do win, your lawyer will take a percentage of the amount awarded to you, generally one third. If you don’t win your case, you don’t owe any attorney fees. Click here for more information on New York City personal injury attorneys.