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The following is a guest post from the Illinois personal injury lawyers of  Dolan Law Offices:

Open the yellow pages, watch television, or even check your mailbox and you will see advertisements from various personal injury lawyers who promise to help you with your claim. When under lots of stress, it can really be tempting to immediately contact and hire one of these attorneys. However, before you do that, it is important to carefully consider the reason why you are contacting a lawyer and what you want to accomplish. Most of us are very careful when choosing which doctor we will entrust our physical wellbeing to. When looking for a lawyer to whom we could entrust our legal well-being, we should be just as careful.

In order to determine if a particular lawyer is right for you, request a free consultation with the attorney whom you are considering to hire and ask some, or all, of the following questions:

1. What is your experience in handling cases that are similar to mine?
2. Were you successful in those cases?
3. What is your policy about communicating with clients? How can I reach you? How long will it take you to respond to my questions? Will I be able to reach you directly or will I only have contact with your support staff?
4. How will you be paid? How are settlement and litigation costs handled?
5. Do you have past clients who can serve as references?
6. If a settlement is offered that you suggest I take and I don’t want to accept it, how will you handle that situation?
7. Have you ever been professionally disciplined or had your license to practice law ever been suspended?

While these questions will provide you with some useful information, the most important information that you will gain from an initial consultation is information about your potential lawyer’s personality. Do you feel comfortable with him? Does he listen to you? Does he respect your legal goals? If the answers to these questions are yes, and you received answers with which you are comfortable with to the questions described above, then you have found yourself a personal injury lawyer.

Dolan Law Offices represent victims of personal injuries throughout the state of Illinois and welcome new client meetings.

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Max Kennerly, a fellow Philadelphia trial lawyer wrote an interesting blog post a few  weeks ago which I'd like to share with my readers here. It puts into perspective the balance which has to be maintained between professional and personal life  for lawyers who do the type of work that we do. This is sometimes a rule more kept in its violation than in its practice, as I write this post at 6:30 p.m. on a Monday, after my wife just called asking when she should have dinner ready, and after I finished a very long call with a client.

Here's some of what Max says:

But there are only so many hours in the day. Even if a lawyer obsessed about their cases every hour of the day — which we don't want them to do, since it will cloud their judgment — they still wouldn't be able to explain every hypothetical possibility to the client.

Fact is, if a client wants a perfect lawyer, they need to find one willing to devote their entire practice and personal life to their case alone.

The rest of us imperfect lawyers use two techniques: triage and ticklers.

Triage is just like in the hospitals: we attend to the most pressing matters first. David Dow, who represents defendants on Texas' death row, is one of the most respected lawyers in America, yet his The Autobiography of an Execution concedes letting cases go by the wayside for months, sometimes years. He's a less than perfect lawyer, and understandably so: he can't hunt down every trace of exculpatory evidence for a client whose execution is years away when another one of his clients is weeks, days or hours away from death. My triage in civil litigation doesn't carry as much gravity, but it's no less real: I must prioritize the most urgent matters. I do the same for every client when their matter becomes the most urgent matter.

A "tickler" (part of a "tickler file") is a funny name that lawyers dreamed up for "reminder." Litigators in particular are always on some sort of deadline, either by way of the statute of limitations, a deadline for filing or responding to a motion, the closing of discovery, the submission of expert reports, the preparation for a hearing, the taking of a deposition, or trial. Sometimes, the necessary work can be done in minutes. Sometimes it will take weeks. The ticklers are ways of interrupting the triage to point out that work due later needs to be started now....

If you want someone to teach you the intricacies and contradictions of the law, that's available, just be ready for $60 for each courtesy email. But if you've hired someone on a contingent or fixed fee to do battle, it's not unreasonable for them to contact you only as necessary and as useful for your case.

For my clients, if you haven't heard in a while and don't know the status, please write or call, and we'll put your call in the triage and the tickler file and get back to you. If we don't get back to you in a few days, call again. (Email is even better, since I get it outside the office.) If you've learned of or thought something interesting, please write or call, and I'll consider it. Otherwise, I'll contact you when necessary and useful for your case, such as when you need to review an allegation, prepare for discovery, or consider an offer, and I'll forward you the court filings I made on your behalf.

I try to be available to all of my clients by way of office phone, cell phone, e mail (or of course  through contact that clients have with my employees), as much as humanly possible. Some of my colleagues say I am too available, and they opt for a different system.  Like Max, if you can't reach me I am probably in court or in a deposition.

Right now, I have to leave to go home and eat dinner.

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Do all lawyers that advertise that they handle personal injury cases actually do so?  The answer is no. So, as a consumer, what should you be looking for when you are  about to hire a personal injury lawyer. For instance, is it appropriate for you to ask a lawyer about his or her:

• past settlements
• past  verdicts
• trial experience
• appellate experience

Sure is. All lawyers who actually handle and try personal injury cases readily keep this information available. Most, including our firm, post some of this kind of information on their websites. Attorneys can verify their results without violating client confidentially.

If you've been involved in a serious personal injury case, you are more than likely going to need assistance and guidance from an experienced personal injury lawyer. If you've suffered  for instance, a serious neck or back injury, a disc herniation, head injury, or a broken bone you are undoubtedly going to have to deal with unpaid medical bills and wage loss.

Of course, all trial lawyers who actually try cases have lost cases. I certainly have not won all of  my cases. Nor has every case that I've taken to trial resulted in the jury agreeing with me and my client about the value of the case. (And because each case is different, past settlements or verdicts do not guarantee similar results in your case). The value of any particular personal injury case is determined by a slew of criteria, including:

• seriousness of the injuries
• permanency of the injuries
• duration of disability
• amount of unpaid medical bills
• degree of fault of the parties
• location were suit will be filed and where the case will be tried

An experienced personal injury and trial lawyer will take all of these considerations and others into account in determining both the reasonable value of your case and trial strategy.  This is the type of person that you need in your corner when combating the opposing insurance company.  Don't be shy about questioning your prospective lawyer before hiring him.

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Allstate Insurance Company, one of the the largest insurance companies in the country and certainly in Pennsylvania, is raising rates on Pennsylvania insureds. But here's the kicker. They are only raising rates  on folks who have their homes insured with Allstate; insureds who have  the combination of homeowners and auto coverage are not seeing the same level of increase in their premiums. Here's what Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Harold Brubaker wrote yesterday in his article on the subject.

Allstate Property & Casualty Insurance Co. is imposing an average premium increase of 33.4 percent on the roughly 45,000 Pennsylvania customers who buy only homeowner's insurance from the company. The average increase for customers who insure both their homes and their cars with the division of Allstate Corp. in Northbrook, Ill., is 11.3 percent, according to a filing with the Pennsylvania Insurance Department. The increase was effective for renewals starting May 20.The big jump in costs for homeowners-insurance-only customers prompted Lance Haver, consumer advocate in the Philadelphia Mayor's Office, to buy radio advertisements with his own money warning consumers of the rate increase and advising them to shop around before their renewals kick in. Haver, in an interview Tuesday, called the two-tiered rate increase bizarre. It's as if they think there is "some correlation between your house catching fire and who you insure your car with," he said.

 

Seems to me that this may be a clever, and perhaps devious, way for Allstate to market to their insureds combining homeowners and auto coverage. In other words, when an insured gets the premium increase, and calls his or her agent, the agent will have a script ready to tell the insured how to lower the premium...."buy auto coverage through us!"

The point is, shop around for your auto, and homeowners coverage. I tell clients that all the time. One of the best places to go is the Pennsylvania Insurance Department website.

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