We have established the importance of hiring a personal injury attorney who specializes in handling pedestrian accident cases. Now, how do you find the right one to handle your case?
Personal Network
Word of mouth advertising is alive and well in the legal profession. Ask your friends, family members, and professional peers to recommend a personal injury lawyer. If you know an attorney, but the lawyer does not practice pedestrian accident law, you can still receive a recommendation on a highly qualified litigator for your pedestrian accident case.
State Bar Association
Virtually every state bar association operates a database that contains the names of thousands of lawyers that are licensed to practice law in the state. All you have to do is click the personal injury link in the database to get a long list of personal injury lawyers. State bar association databases also let potential clients know if the state has taken any disciplinary actions against an attorney whose legal services interest you.
How to Choose the Right Lawyer
You might get more than one recommendation, which means you need to conduct research about any lawyer on your shortlist of candidates. Even if you are down to one potential candidate, you still need to learn more about the attorney by completing research.
Experience
Find out where the attorney graduated from law school, and then ask the following questions to determine the experience of the lawyer.
- How long have you practiced pedestrian accident law?
- What percentage of your cases involve personal injury law
- Do you mostly represent plaintiffs or defendants?
- What percentage of your cases ended with a favorable outcome for a client?
- Have you worked claims with the defendant’s insurance company?
Who Will Represent Me?
Some law firms send their most experienced attorneys to meet with clients during free case evaluations. Then, the same law firm assigns a less senior lawyer to handle the case. Since experience matters for litigating personal injury cases, you want the same experienced lawyer that you meet during the free case evaluation to represent you in front of a civil court judge and across the table from an attorney representing the defendant’s insurance company.
Open Line of Communication
We are not talking about an attorney’s communication skills at a conference with a representative of the defendant’s insurance company. We are talking about the communication between you and your personal injury lawyer. You want to hire an attorney who promptly responds to emails, phone calls, and text messages. Pedestrian accident cases can be difficult to understand, which means you can expect to ask a lot of questions.
Make sure those questions get answered in a timely manner.
Matches Your Settlement Goal
You are going to hear plenty about ‘being on the same page” with your personal injury lawyer. Perhaps no other issue requires as tightness of unity as deciding on the settlement for your claim. Your pedestrian accident attorney must want the same things that you want out of a settlement.
Here are three common approaches to reaching a settlement:
- · Get a settlement that falls within an acceptable range of value and minimizes costs
- · Ask for an amount that is higher than what the insurance company has offered
- · Obtain as much money as possible
Read Online Reviews
As the last step before you decide on which personal injury attorney to hire, reading online reviews on sites such as Facebook and Google can confirm the expertise of a personal injury lawyer. You should also access the attorney’s Better Business Bureau (BBB) page.