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.