How to Select a Car Crash Lawyer

The average car crash-related hospital bill often exceeds $100,000. In a catastrophic injury situation, like a spine injury or serious burns, the medical bills could be ten times as high, or even more. Since so much is at stake, it’s important to pick the best Rockford personal injury attorney. But how do injury victims narrow their choices?

Many people rely on internet reviews and the experiences of friends or family. These factors, while important, may not be decisive. In your quest for a good Rockford personal injury attorney, we suggest that you focus on the following areas. But whatever you do, do it quickly. The more time passes, the harder it is to obtain fair compensation for your injuries.

Experience

This factor may be the most important one, and also one of the most misleading ones. Years of experience, by itself, may not be enough. Most personal injury cases settle out of court. So, many car crash lawyers may practice personal injury law for years or even decades and almost never go to trial.

Your attorney must have trial experience. Even though most cases settle out of court, trial advocacy skills are essential in the settlement process. If an attorney has weak trial skills, insurance companies will not offer as much money, because the risk of a trial is less. On the other hand, if an attorney has outstanding trial skills, the financial settlements are usually higher. No baseball teams want to take on the World Series champs. But they will square off against a bottom-feeder team any day of the week.

Dedication

Years of experience is also deceptive in terms of dedication. When kids need medical checkups, they should go to pediatricians and not oncologists.

The same thing applies to lawyers, and the late Grant Cooper is a good illustration. Cooper, who died in 1990, represented convicted Robert Kennedy assassin Sirhan Sirhan. Cooper was an experienced attorney, but he was a celebrity lawyer and not a criminal lawyer. He represented Shirly Temple in her divorce from B-movie stalwart John Agar.

Perhaps because of his lack of dedication, Cooper did not aggressively attack the state’s evidence in the Sirhan case, even though there were some holes in it. His lack of dedication may be the reason Sirhan is still in jail.

Apropos of nothing, one of the latest Kennedy conspiracies maintains that Cooper intentionally threw the Sirhan case. That may be true, but who knows.

Accessibility

People make decisions according to accessibility quite frequently. When they try new restaurants, if there are no cars in the parking lot, that’s a bad sign. Conversely, if the restaurant is so busy they must wait an hour for a table, it’s probably better to go somewhere else.

Attorneys are the same way. If the lawyer has few clients, there is probably a reason, most likely inexperience or lack of dedication. If the lawyer has too many clients, there is a good chance your claim will not get the attention it deserves. There is also a good chance an associate lawyer, or even a paralegal, may do most of the work.

Goldielocks wanted that “just right” chair, bowl of porridge, and bed. Likewise, accident victims need a “just right” lawyer in terms of accessibility.

Contact Assertive Attorneys

An attorney should have the right set of credentials to handle your case. For a free consultation with an experienced personal injury lawyer in Rockford, contact Fisk & Monteleone, Ltd. After-hours visits are available.