Why do some personal injury attorneys have a bad reputation? Well, the number one reason is they seem to be greedy. They want to easily settle a case and get paid without doing the hard work necessary to get the best settlement. Number two, a lot of personal injury attorneys are bad at returning communications, returning phone calls, emails. That is the number one bar complaint for lawyers are the failure to respond adequately and quickly and enough to clients. At the Law Offices of Brent Caldwell, we will fight for your case until we get the best result we possibly can for you and we will be always available for phone calls, emails, and we will get back to you within a very quick time with those communications.
How does a personal injury attorney get paid?
A personal injury attorney gets paid on a contingency fee basis. A contingency fee means that the attorney does not get paid unless he successfully resolves or wins the case. The percentages on a personal injury case range from 30 to 40%, depending on the type of case and depending on when the case is resolved. The fee is generally a little bit higher if there’s a lawsuit and a trial, and the fee is a little bit less if the case resolves via settlement without a lawsuit. In addition to the contingency fee, attorneys like myself finance the case. What that means is we pay all the expenses of your case. We pay filing fees, court costs, deposition fees, expert fees. We prepare exhibits to use in court.
All of that is tremendously expensive. And an injury lawyer like myself pays for all that. We get reimbursed from the settlement for those as well. So, we would get a percentage as our fee and get reimbursed the cost that we put into the case. The good thing for the client is we never ask them for a penny until the case is resolved. So, they can pursue their case to the extent it needs to be pursued and not have to worry about how am I going to pay these expenses of litigation.
Another good point, and not all attorneys do this, but in my office, if we do not win your case, we don’t get paid a fee and we don’t get our cost reimbursed. So, you better believe that we’re going to be working hard on your case to win your case so that we’re not spending money and losing money. We are taking your case because we believe even your case and we think we can get you a good result.
Are all personal injury attorneys trial attorneys?
The short answer is no. You hear a lot of injury lawyers on the radio. A lot of those folks are called settlement mills. They get a case, they help you make the insurance claims, they get your records, and they try to settle your case. If they can’t settle the case, they pass it on to another attorney to be the trial attorney. Well, at my office, if we take your case at the beginning, we’re staying with it until the end. If we get it settled before trial because we can get you a settlement, great. If we must go to trial, we’re with you the whole way and we’re taking the case to trial.
It’s important that you pick an attorney that will be with you the whole way so that you’re not swapping lawyers. And, these settlement mills have an interest in getting your case settled so that they get paid, and they don’t have to pass the case on to another attorney. Oftentimes, settlement is not the best result for your case. Sometimes trial is necessary. You want to pick the right lawyer that’s with you the whole way.
How do you calculate pain and suffering?
The short answer is every case is different. With medical bills, with lost earnings, those are easy to prove. I get medical bills. I can show how much was paid. I get your wage statements, your check stubs, your tax returns. I can prove how much money you were making and how much you’ve lost. But with pain and suffering, there is lots of different things that come in. Can you no longer go surfing? Can you no longer run a marathon? Can you no longer go snowboarding? All those things would be looked at when we’re trying to figure out what a fair amount for pain and suffering is. Are you still in pain? Are you depressed? Are you anxious now? Are you afraid to drive on the freeway because of a car crash? All that stuff comes into pain and suffering.
Quite frankly, the worse the injuries, the more you’re going to get for pain and suffering. But, as a personal injury attorney, my job is to show the before and after. My job is to have your spouse, your girlfriend, your coworker come in as a witness and explain that “Before the crash, she was like this. After the crash, she’s like this.” So, explaining the differences in how it’s affected them as a human. We often call them human damages, not pain and suffering. We call them human damages.
Contact our OC personal injury attorneys today.
