Keys to hiring a personal injury lawyer

We came across Expertlaw.com, which prides itself on “bringing experts and attorneys together.” Seems like a smart space for medical malpractice cases. Digging into the website, we found Michigan attorney Aaron Larson's “keys to hiring a personal injury lawyer.” We’ll let him do the calling out of his brethren.

Should I hire the personal injury law firm with the 1-800 number and all of the ads on TV?

Generally speaking, television and radio advertisements are a bad way to find an attorney. Many advertisements are paid for by referral agencies, which collect large numbers of calls and then divide them up between member attorneys. Even when the advertisements are paid for by a law firm, often many of the cases are referred out to other firms who share the enormous cost of advertising. Most of the time, the attorney with the big advertising campaign will not have an office near you. Unless your case is worth a lot of money, you may well find that you are quickly referred to a different firm or that you can't get much attention for your case.

Please note that, when it comes to hiring a personal injury lawyer, many of the best personal injury attorneys do little or no advertising. They get their cases through "referrals" from other attorneys, due to their reputations for doing good work and getting good results.

Seen any good commercials lately?

Should I hire the lawyer with the big "yellow pages" ad?

If you look at the "full page" ads in the yellow pages, you will likely find that there are two types. The first type is an ad for a local attorney, who has chosen to pay for the full page. The second type is an ad for an attorney from outside the area, sometimes from the same attorney who runs the huge television ad campaigns.

Many of the biggest ads will be from personal injury law firms, who anticipate that their large advertisements will bring them large numbers of injury cases. Many of the better personal injury lawyers and firms do pay for full-page ads. However, as was previously noted, some of the best personal injury lawyers do little or no advertising at all. Also, there are many attorneys who buy the largest ad that they can afford in order to make their practices appear better than they really are.

If you look through the yellow pages, you will see that most lawyers claim to specialize in "personal injury" cases. Many of these lawyers have handled very few personal injury cases, and some have never had even a single injury case. The yellow pages can provide some degree of confirmation that a particular law firm is established, but even a big advertisement does not certify that a firm is qualified to handle your case.

Comments

[Tom St. Louis]

The sad fact is there is actually good lawyers in the yellow pages who are somewhat smeared because of what the others (read: most of them) are doing in their own particular ads. I personally think that there is still hope for these decent ones and they don’t need to sink down to what the other lawyers are doing.

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It is so important to have a lawyer you can trust. Good luck!

[injury attorney west palm beach]

I think people now are smart to have their own attorney in their family. They're lucky. But for some who really don't know anybody from the law, ask friends or relatives who has experienced also what you have experienced.

-craig

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I think that there is still hope for these decent ones and they don’t need to sink down to what the other lawyers are doing.

Joshua

[Stas]

Lawyers Intended to rich people.