Were you injured due to someone else’s negligence and have questions about what to expect after an injury? Contact our Boise attorneys today.
1) Choosing a Personal Injury Attorney
You probably wouldn’t be looking at this if you didn’t have questions about how you should pick a personal injury attorney. Who should my personal injury attorney be? There’s a process that we would recommend that you go through in picking your Idaho personal injury attorney. That process requires investigation. Spend some time looking around.
Certainly, don’t just respond to TV advertising or billboard advertising. See if you really have a trial attorney that you’re looking for. Not every personal injury attorney is a trial attorney.
A trial attorney is somebody who is not scared of the courtroom, wants to go to the courtroom, and is perfectly happy to go to the courtroom. Why does that matter? Because the insurance companies know the difference. They know if a lawyer is willing to go to the courtroom, then that case is going to get full value in resolution, whether it’s after trial or in settlement. Many cases do settle. That’s important, but one of the ways you make cases settle is by going to trial on other cases.
What do you want to look for in that trial attorney? You want somebody with success in the courtroom. Do your research. Look at their resumes, look at what they’ve done. You want somebody who’s been recognized by many of the organizations that acknowledge attorneys. There’s a very traditional one called Martindale-Hubbell. What’s the lawyer’s rating there? AV is the highest.
There are other public rating systems: Best Lawyers Ratings, Avvo Ratings, many other standards. There is one organization, and we’re proud that we have a member of that organization in our firm, Charlie Hepworth, but there’s one organization of the Top 100 trial lawyers in the country. It’s called the Inner Circle of Advocates. You have to be a great lawyer to be in that.
Is the person a member of the American College of Trial Lawyers? Are they members of AAJ? Do they teach other lawyers how to do lawyering? All of these things are out there to be found. Spend your time on the Internet looking at these things when you’re identifying a personal injury lawyer for your claim in Idaho.
Find a lawyer who knows what they’re doing in the courtroom. Find a lawyer who actually spends their time in injury cases. You don’t want a general practice lawyer. You don’t want a business lawyer. You don’t want somebody who does wills and estates sometimes and does divorces sometimes. What you want is a personal injury trial lawyer with results.
If you want to talk more about it and what we’ve accomplished at our firm, just give us a call. Anyone of us will talk to you. We’ll tell you if you’re looking at good lawyers and we’ll tell you the people to stay away from, too. Pick the right trial lawyer because the trial lawyer you pick for your personal injury claim in Idaho can make a big difference in your life and in your future.
2) When to Settle a Personal Injury Case
That is a very simple question that has a very complicated answer because there’s so much that goes into the consideration of what the value of a personal injury case is. There’s a lot that goes into the basic decision that needs to be made by the injured person as to whether they should or should not settle.
If you’re represented by me personally or anybody else in my law firm, then it’s our responsibility to be your voice in talking to the other side. It’s also our responsibility to gather all the information we can that is relevant to the value of your claim, like are there going to be future medical expenses? Is this injury going to be permanent? What’s that going to look like for the rest of the person’s life? We gather all that information and then sit down with you to provide you with all of the information necessary to make an informed and intelligent choice.
It is your choice. We have, of course, a lot of experience settling cases or otherwise taking them to trial when necessary.
The question of whether you’re getting a reasonable value in the settlement or not really boils down to what a jury would do if you went to Idaho jury trial. That’s the type of thing for which there is no magic answers. It’s hard to predict. Nobody knows the answer to that. The other side doesn’t know it; nobody does because you haven’t even met your jury yet.
What it requires, if you want to get the maximum value of what is a reasonable, and just, and fair amount of money to satisfy your claim, is having the best legal team on your side. The other side is aware of this. If you don’t want to settle it, that we’re perfectly willing and able to take it to a jury trial and the other side knows it because we actually have had a track record of successfully pursuing jury trials for decades and decades. That question will also involve a consideration of how risk-averse you want to be. It’s really your personal decision.
If you want to make that decision, then you need the best attorneys, trial attorneys, actual trial attorneys that you can find. Our firm has done this for many years successfully. If you have such a situation, please feel free to call us anytime at all or anybody else, any of the other lawyers in my law firm because we all have a similar level of experience all doing the same type of work, again, representing your best legal interests.
3) What You Need to do in a Personal Injury Case
For the person who’s injured and has a personal injury claim, what they have to do in the lawsuit is not a lot, believe it or not. It basically means if you’re going to hire – if you don’t hire counsel, then you’re going to have a lot to do. It’s going to be overwhelming, particularly if you’re injured.
If you have an attorney, particularly an attorney with the sophistication and background and experience of pursuing such claims, then the lawyer will do most of the work for you. You’ll first have to interview with lawyers and select one. You get the right to select who you want to have representing you and your interests. Once you do that, it will be then up to them to do that which is necessary to put the case in a position of being evaluated and attempted to be settled. If that can’t be settled, or if it can’t, then to pursue the lawsuit.
At that point, the only things that the injured person would need to do is basically call and find out what the status is and just to follow it along. You’ll be occasionally called upon to answer some questions. You’re occasionally called upon to have meetings or the like where you are engaging in answering the other side’s discovery requests. That really just involves meeting with the lawyer or talking with the lawyer.
Then at some point, you may be required to give a deposition. If iThe other side has the right to take a deposition, which is testimony under oath in a conference room just like the one I’m sitting in now and ask you a series of questions about what happened in the accident, your background and the like. That would be something potentially you would have to do. If the thing ultimately has to go to a jury trial, well, then you’ll be required to sit in during the jury trial and be present at all times.
Really, the amount of effort that the injured person has to put into the pursuit of the claim is actually relatively limited. It’s the lawyer or team of lawyers that’s going to do most of the work associated with pursuing the claim and trying to maximize its value. At our firm, for example, we have a lot of legal horsepower here. We have a number of different lawyers. They’re all doing the same type of work to pursue the common goal of maximizing the value of the claim and getting you the amount deserved.
The insurance companies on the other side, they know that we have the legal sophistication and horsepower and the actual experience of going to jury trials if necessary. If you have such a claim, please feel free to call me personally at any time to talk about it further or talk to any of the other lawyers at our law firm. Again, we all do the same type of work and we’re all working closely together.
Were you injured due to someone else’s negligence in Boise and have questions about what to expect after an injury? Contact our experienced Boise Personal Injury Lawyers at Hepworth Holzer today for a free consultation and case evaluation.
We are committed to helping individuals and families throughout Idaho navigate the world of personal injury litigation as quickly and efficiently as possible. Let us get results for you and your family.
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