Atlanta Personal Injury and Medical Malpractice Lawyer

It is also important to hire a lawyer that has good support staff allowing the lawyer to focus on significant factual and legal issues while the support staff handles the more routine aspects of the case.  Insurers bury claimants (and their lawyers) with paperwork, so an attorney who is not properly staffed will easily get bogged down in “urgent” lower-level tasks that must get done but have little impact on the value of the case.  

When you hire a big advertising law firm, you get big overhead costs.  This means that the big advertising firm will likely staff your case with their profit in mind.  At the bigger personal injury law firms, one lawyer has as many as 300 to 400 open cases with several case managers assigned to assist the lawyer.  A case manager’s primary job is to keep the lawyer from actually having to communicate with the client, and with that many open files, there just is not time for meaningful lawyer to client communications.  At their best, case managers serve as a point of contact for the client and assist the client with treatment and initial insurance paperwork, but they often have little legal training to provide quality advice.  Typically, a case manager will have anywhere from 80 to 100 open files.  Accordingly, nuances about your case can easily get missed.  If your case does not fit into a cookie cutter mold (and few actually do), it may not be handled in a manner that maximizes the recovery to you.

By comparison, I carry less than 50 active cases (far, far less than the average big advertising lawyer).  I have an incredible legal support team that includes a full-time paralegal with over 30 years of experience in personal injury and a full-time client onboarding specialist who assists with all the paperwork necessary to get a case up and running.  Thus, a quality boutique trial firm like The Baer Law Firm can devote far more time, attention, and resources to your case which is what you really want from your lawyer.  

Furthermore, lawyers at big personal injury law firms are under immense pressure to meet monthly and quarterly revenue goals.  The advertisements that I see about how you need a big personal injury law firm to fight the big insurance company because smaller firms have economic pressure to settle for less are so misleading.  Attorneys at big law firms are under way more pressure than a successful smaller personal injury firm to settle cases because big firm personal injury lawyers have to meet an arbitrary revenue goal and answer to a supervisor that could care a less about any individual case.  

When choosing a law firm, it is important to ask about the background and experience of the specific lawyer that will be assigned to your case.  While many of the big firms have some excellent lawyers, they also have many lawyers who have only been out of law school a year or two and who graduated from inferior law schools.  These lawyers are “supervised” by more experienced attorneys but given the sheer volume (300+) of cases they and the “supervising lawyer” are responsible for, it is unlikely that meaningful supervision on your case will occur unless and until there is an emergency.  You do not want your personal injury case to be in “emergency” status before an experienced lawyer takes a hard look at it. 

With all this in mind, below are my top 5 things to avoid when choosing a personal injury or medical malpractice lawyer and law firm.

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3. Avoid hiring a personal injury or medical malpractice lawyer who does not “litigate”

– In addition to not trying cases, some personal injury or medical malpractice lawyers do not even file lawsuits. In fact, some bigger firms have separate “pre-suit” and “litigation” departments and attorneys. Thus, if you are with an attorney who does not “litigate,” the case will be “referred to litigation” if it cannot be settled pre-suit. The litigation departments in such firms are often overwhelmed with lawsuits. I hear complaints all the time of people who tell me their case has been “referred to litigation” and they never hear from their new lawyer, and that their former lawyer doesn’t know anything other than their case is with “litigation.”

– Furthermore, if you hire a personal injury or medical malpractice attorney who does not file suit, it is in his or her best interest to settle your case for less than the case’s value either to meet his or her “quota” or to avoid sharing their fee with “litigation.”

4. Avoid hiring a lawyer for your personal injury case that does not focus on personal injury

– Personal injury cases require a significant amount of work to get up and running: investigating the scene, hiring experts, sending proper notifications, handling insurance paperwork, contacting witnesses, recommending good treating providers. All of this upfront legwork requires a lawyer and staff who know what they are doing and have a dedicated process for doing it the right way. Trying to prove a personal injury case that has not been set up properly is like building a house on an improper foundation. The case, like the house, will collapse.

– Furthermore, lawyers that do not focus on personal injury may not know the lay of the land well enough to get you to a doctor who can help you get better and accurately document your injuries in a detailed manner to prove the case. There are some doctors who understandably do not want to get involved. Unfortunately, if you are treated by one of those doctors, it may be harder to prove your case. Or a lawyer may refer you to a “marketing doctor” who just wants to run up a large bill that eats up all the recovery money awarded to you.

– Additionally, lawyers who do not focus on personal injury can rarely dedicate the time required to adequately build a personal injury case. At a minimum, proving a personal injury case requires gathering all the records and bills which is not as easy as it seems. It also requires dedicated review and analysis of those records and bills. Lawyers with other areas of focus rarely make time for this work and do not have staff with sufficient experience to assist with the heavy lifting. As a result, your case can sit causing deadlines to be missed which often prejudices your case.

5. Avoid hiring a lawyer who has too many cases already

– This is the most common mistake made, and the blame lies solely with the lawyer for taking on more cases than he or she can handle. In my opinion, most all personal injury lawyers at the big personal injury firms have too many cases. No one lawyer can effectively manage hundreds of cases, regardless of the size and quality of the staff. There are too many opportunities for an important case specific or client specific detail to get overlooked and absolutely no ability for a lawyer with that heavy of a case load to properly communicate with hundreds of clients.

– Furthermore, the stress of this sort of case load is overwhelming. Thus, when and if you are able to speak to your lawyer, the lawyer is likely to be short and unable to focus his or her attention on your concern.

The Baer Law Firm has the capacity to take on your case, the knowhow and experience with your type of case, and the resources to go the distance for your case. When you retain The Baer Law Firm, you hire me! Call The Baer Law Firm today at 404.THE.BAER (404.843.2237) for honest advice about your legal matter.

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