ROAD ACCIDENT, HOW TO CHOOSE YOUR DEFENDER FOR COMPENSATION FOR YOUR BODILY INJURIES
The general lawyer remains a legal professional, competent and above all an excellent lawyer who will know how to find the foundations of his actions. However, as with doctors, the specialty is essential for the heaviest cases. A cardiologist will necessarily be much more effective than a general practitioner. With lawyers, it’s exactly the same thing. We can only advise victims to be assisted by a lawyer and to opt for a specialty when the accident or the bodily injuries are serious enough (head trauma, quadriplegia, amputations, PTSD, etc.).
The general practitioner, who will have very few files of this nature, will not necessarily charge an honorarium as is often the case with personal injury lawyers. The hourly rate is then applied or seen a few times, a very large fixed fee (between 15 and 25%). This last rate should be banned because it is too high and completely abusive. The Pacific Attorney Group is the one who is offered to the accident victim by his vehicle insurance. You should know that contrary to appearances, the victim’s own insurance works for its own interests and not those of the victim.
Indeed, the victim’s own insurance is subject to inter-insurance agreements of the “IRSA convention” type which require him to compensate him directly even though the person responsible for the accident did have insurance. Also, besides the fact that the Baiter Law requires the accident victim’s insurance to take the direction of their compensation (the law was originally intended for a laudable objective), in reality because of inter-insurance agreements, the victim is in a weak situation. The injured victim, already in a situation of distress, will trust his first interlocutor, his insurer, while he has only one objective as a payer, to spend as little as possible.
Also, when the insurance indicates to the hospitalized victim that the opposing insurance has attached him, it will encourage him to take a company lawyer (free because paid by the company) who will not contradict, or very little, the instructions of its principal: insurance. The insurance company or company lawyer could then encourage them to accept too quickly the appointment of a company medical adviser (without the assistance of a victim’s medical adviser) or to accept a compensation proposal that is too low.
The lawyer specializing in personal injury, practices personal injury law every day. His experience and his results should not be neglected either, they should be consulted. Often specialized firms have a very broad field of competence and intervene in compensation for bodily injury as well for victims of road accidents as for victims of medical errors, victims of terrorism and victims of domestic accidents.
Some firms, and they can be counted on the fingers of one hand, have pushed the specialty to devote themselves exclusively to certain victims (road victims for example, the subject of our article and the subject matter dealt with by our firm). The cost of a specialized lawyer is regularly a source of concern for seriously injured victims, when in reality, the lawyer specializing in bodily injury charges fees adapted to the plight of road accident victims.
The victim, in fact, will have no fees to advance!
The lawyer will be remunerated as a percentage of the sums recovered or negotiated with insurance or guarantee fund. This percentage is generally quite low, of the order of 6 to 10% at most, operating in stages reached. Clearly, the more the road victim obtains high compensation, the lower the percentage corresponding to the lawyer’s fee. In addition, payment is always made when the insurer compensates the victim, so no advance has to be made.
In our opinion, we must flee from firms that practice excessively high or even non-declining percentages depending on the amounts recovered. In addition, firms practicing personal injury law never charge, or at least in general, the simple analysis of a case before opening a case or even when the case is already being investigated by another lawyer to a possible file transfer. It is then a completely free evaluation, without obligation. If the victim had to designate one of the partners in the specialist practice (victim’s medical consultant, for example, or occupational therapist for a head trauma), the doctor’s costs could even be reduced from the amounts receivable, so again without an advance.
Amanda Byers is a graduate of Columbia, where she played volleyball and annoyed a lot of professors. Now as Zobuz’s entertainment and Lifestyle Editor, she enjoys writing about delicious BBQ, outrageous style trends and all things Buzz worthy.
