Should I Hire a Lawyer For a Car Accident?
Posted on: June 14, 2024For many people, hiring a car accident lawyer can seem like overkill. After all, you can easily make some phone calls without legal assistance, right?
Here at Beers & Gordon, we’ve had hundreds of clients come through our doors who originally thought the same thing. Each of these clients eventually realized an experienced car accident lawyer makes a huge difference in realizing a satisfactory outcome in a personal injury case.
While Florida law has adopted a No Fault system (whereby injured parties turn to their own insurance policies for payment of medical expenses), many accident victims find themselves fighting the very insurance companies that were supposed to provide them with compensation.
Yet even when you think your personal injury case is relatively easy, there are many benefits to hiring an accident attorney.
One of the main reasons that people hire a lawyer is the difficulty in dealing with car accident cases on their own.
If this is your first time being involved in a car crash, many aspects of the process will be confusing and unfamiliar to you. Terms like PIP, BI coverage, and other jargon are being thrown at you right and left.
Not to mention, no one is returning your calls, or the insurance company is calling you constantly trying to pressure you into a settlement that you do not want. Many times, the insurance representative is adding to the confusion you have about resolving your case. And on top of all that, you have no idea what’s expected of you.
One of the best values of a personal injury attorney is that they will handle your case for you, from gathering evidence to communicating with the insurance company. You can focus on what is the most important thing in the long run—recovering from your injuries.
2. Legal Representation
Despite their assurance that they will take care of you, insurance representatives are not your friends. Their job is to act in their employers’ best interests—not yours.
Our personal injury lawyers have heard many stories where the insurance rep told accident victims that all medical expenses would be taken care of, only to offer half of the total expenses later (calling it a “fair” amount).
The representative will claim that the offer being made will cover the amount that PIP does not pay. However, there is no way that anyone can predict the amount of treatment you may need and what expenses you may incur only a week or two after the crash.
If we’ve learned only one thing during our combined 40 years working for both commercial and personal line insurance carriers, it’s that the claims representative’s job is to pay the least amount possible on your claim.
Remember, at the end of the day, their main incentive is to save the insurance company money.
3. Focus On Recovery
Waiting until after you are fully healed or substantially recovered can also have unforeseen complications. In Florida, the statute of limitations to file a lawsuit is now two years. Depending on your injuries and the extent of the treatment needed, you may be in recovery for much longer.
Even a relatively minor impact can cause a lot of pain and suffering. When you hire an attorney, the burden of handling your case is off your shoulders, allowing you to focus on your recovery.
You also have access to an attorney and experienced staff who can assist in discussing treatment and other options if your recovery is not progressing as you hoped. This experience is invaluable in getting you to the best position for a good recovery.
In fact, we think this is one of the reasons why our clients tend to have a good recovery from their motorcycle and/or car accident injuries. Having the freedom to seek out excellent medical care (rather than handle your case) means you can spend your energy getting better.
4. Better Outcome
Another reason to hire a car accident attorney is the wealth of knowledge they can bring to your case.
When you handle your own case, it is almost guaranteed that you will miss certain vital steps that can make or break your case. For instance, you may forget to collect the police report or miss preserving crucial evidence. You may not know to get an EDR (Event Data Record) download of the vehicles, which would have shown the speed of the vehicles at impact.
An attorney can also investigate your insurance policies to discover all the coverage available to you and make sure that insurance claims are filed appropriately. Sometimes, there is additional coverage through an employer, a relative with whom the driver lived, or other coverage that was not disclosed.
When you are handling your own case, you do not know where to look compared to attorneys who have handled thousands of cases.
With the experience of both the attorneys and staff at Beers & Gordon, we know these claims inside and out. We will deal with everything and explain to you what is going on in simpler terms because we have handled tens of thousands of claims and cases.
5. No Cost To You
Another reason it is worth hiring an attorney? It costs you nothing.
Personal injury firms handle cases on a contingency basis, which means that their fee is a percentage of your settlement, and you don’t pay unless we win your case.
Furthermore, any costs are paid by the firm, so nothing involved in pursuing your claim comes out of your pocket. Even the initial consultation is typically free!
At Beers & Gordon, your initial consultation will be with the attorney. Only an attorney can offer you legal advice. A call center employee you reached after getting a number off a billboard cannot answer legal questions. Neither can an investigator. So, why not take the opportunity to speak to an attorney when it is free?
6. Larger Settlement
Even if you knew what a fair settlement amount was, it is unlikely that you will ever see one without an attorney.
Most insurance representatives receive incentives to pay the least amount possible on a claim. Thus, they are going to try and convince you that the offer that they are making is fair and is “always” accepted.
More importantly, claims representatives often believe that individuals who don’t hire attorneys are not serious about the case. Without the threat of litigation, cases are valued at a much lower amount.
Unfortunately, we have seen settlement offers that do not cover medical expenses. Then, when the client decides to engage our office, we are often able to secure a settlement many times the original offer.
Also, many cases require litigation to get a fair offer. You will not want to litigate a case against an experienced insurance defense attorney on your own. Instead, you will want an attorney handling the case to ensure that the case is best positioned to get the best possible recovery.
A Case Study
A few years ago, we had a client who was a college student involved in a devastating crash a couple years prior to the consultation. The photos of the damage made you wonder how anyone walked out of the vehicle alive!
She came to us because the insurance company had offered her about 20% of her medical bill balance, which was under $3,000. This insurer kept trying to get this teenage girl to accept a minimal amount of money. This amount of money did not even make her whole when the other driver (likely drunk) caused a devastating crash.
This client had a large gap in medical treatment that was going to impact her financial recovery. We took the case primarily because we were shocked at the treatment by the insurance company. We felt that this company was trying to take advantage of a 19-year-old woman trying to handle her own case, and we wanted to help.
We settled the case for nearly 10 times the original offer, because the insurance company realized the danger if the case ever went to trial due to the devastating crash.
Had the insurance company offered her the limited out-of-pocket medical expenses, she never would have sought counsel. Instead, the insurance company tried to save a few hundred dollars by taking advantage of a young girl because she had not sought counsel.
Unfortunately, stories like this occur all the time.
Yes, You Should Hire a Car Accident Attorney
When you file a claim after a car accident, you are not going up against the other driver; you’re going up against the insurance company.
These companies not only have much more knowledge and experience than you do, they are incentivized to look out for the insurance company’s bottom line—not yours!
This is one of the reasons why we discuss our nearly 70 years of combined experience working with insurers. We know how insurers evaluate claims, the tactics they use to undervalue your claim, and—more importantly—how to recover a truly fair settlement amount.
Importantly, when you have the opportunity for a free consultation with attorneys, you can decide whether hiring an attorney is worth it. You really have nothing to lose and will only gain more knowledge about your case.
Call our offices today to meet with a licensed personal injury attorney and see how much easier the legal process is with Beers & Gordon.
Jim Gordon
Jim Gordon earned his Juris Doctorate from the University of Nebraska in 1997, and two years later began working at a firm in Orlando handling insurance defense matters on cases involving vehicle accidents, negligence, product liability, and more. He established Beers & Gordon P.A. with David Beers in 2009 to represent the rights of people injured because of negligence. He is a member of the invitation-only National Trial Lawyers organization and the Million Dollar Advocates Forum.
