The process of a personal injury case is always the same, no matter what type of case it is (medical malpractice case, civil rights case, car accident case, fall down case).
Once you provide us information about what happened to you, what medical injuries you’ve sustained, and the sort of treatment you are receiving, we obtain all medical records and do our investigation. In a car accident case, for instance, we go to the scene of the accident, take photographs, speak to witnesses, and so on.
Once the investigation stage is done, we send all the itemization to the opposing insurance company, and the settlement negotiations are started. If the parties cannot reach a settlement, we file suit.
Once the lawsuit is filed, the court sets certain time tables, telling us by what date we must complete our discovery (depositions, interrogatories, and so on). After that, the court will set the trial date.
Before the trial date, the parties usually go through a pre-trial settlement conference. You may or may not be involved in the pre-trial settlement conference, but you will always be informed of what happens at the conference. If the parties cannot reach an agreement there, the trial date will be set and the parties will go to trial, at which point you will be fully engaged in the trial process.
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.
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: