Why You Need a Personal Injury Attorney and How to Select the Right One

You just got injured. Like most injury victims, your first response is likely to call your insurance company. Doing this is a great mistake many makes and which can cost you thousands of dollars in inadequate compensation.

If you are seriously injured, you may need a personal injury attorney. Having a knowledgeable, attorney on your side can reduce the stress and anxiety during a hard time immediately after your accident and you’ll get the proper compensation.

Why You Should Seek an Experienced Personal Injury Attorney

It’s Possible You’ll Get Compensated 

When you get seriously injured and the accident isn’t your fault, you can be stressed. We tend to make hasty decisions when we’re anxious. In the case of being seriously injured, we want the whole ordeal to be quickly done away with.

This is why many turn to their insurance company.

As optimistic and trusting you are of your insurance company, they don’t have your best interest in mind, but rather their bottom line. If you don’t conduct prior research about the extent of your injury and how much it is worth, your insurance company will likely undersell your rightful compensation.

Hiring a personal injury attorney will ensure that you’ll get sufficient compensation for your injury. You’ll also have someone who is experienced and knowledgeable in personal injury cases.

Contingency Fees

Many who get injured shy away from consulting and hiring a lawyer out of the fear of not being able to afford the lawyer fees.

To help mitigate this fear, many personal injury attorneys have a payment schedule where the client only pays their attorney if they are successful at winning their case.

If you’re injured, you don’t have anything to lose when hiring a personal injury attorney, except if you win your case. Attorneys on this type of compensation scale can be counted on to do all they can to make sure your best interest is first and foremost.

Unbiased Guidance and Knowledge

Being suddenly and wrongfully severely injured can be a stressful time. In the haste of getting your case resolved as quickly as possible, you may not know what the best course of action is.

This is where a personal injury attorney comes in.

With their experience, they can provide valuable, unbiased guidance through the litigation process.

What to Look for When Researching Personal Injury Attorneys

Now you know why you need a personal injury attorney, but how do you go about finding the right personal injury attorney?

Here are some things to look for when researching personal injury attorneys:

Work Your Network

Has someone in your family or someone you know hired a personal injury attorney in the past? If so, ask them for referrals for attorneys.

Check the Attorney’s Rating

Even if your friends and family don’t know a personal injury attorney, you can use the internet to check their ratings and standings with their local and state bar associations.  Some attorney ratings worth checking into include Avvo Ratings, Martindale Peer Reviews, and Super Lawyers. Try to narrow your list of prospects to three or four.

Experience Isn’t Everything

There are personal injury attorneys who have decades of experience and others who are just starting out. Attorneys with many years of experience may have a high caseload (especially if they are successful), which makes them hard to reach and keep them from devoting the time and energy your case needs.

Young, rookie attorneys, on the other hand, will be eager to take on more clients and will be more likely to spend significant time and effort on your case.

Don’t Take Credentials at Face Value

Contrary to what lawyers advertise and want you to believe, credentials, like experience, isn’t everything. How well the attorney represents his or her client and how well their negotiating skills are more important than whether they graduated from an Ivy League college or whether they graduated at the top of their class.

Avoid being wooed by fancy offices and websites and advertising. In many cases, this may be for the show. Only the attorney’s track record should matter.

If you’ve been wrongly injured in an accident, contact Chianese & Reilly Law. We are a personal injury attorney in New York City with a successful track record of settling cases for our clients.

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