We spend hours and hours a week in our automobiles – in some ways, they become something like our second homes. However, it’s important not to get too comfortable behind the wheel. Accidents are common on the open road – in fact, they’re much more common than most of us would like to believe.
Car accidents are so frequent, in fact, that each one of us is likely to be in at least one accident during the course of our lives.
For this reason, it’s important to take the possible threat of an auto accident seriously. An accident can completely disrupt your life, threaten your well-being via personal injury, and dislodge your financial stability.
Recovering from such an accident can take serious work, and it’s essential you get the kind of compensation you have a right to following this kind of incident. A personal injury lawyer can help.
Why should you hire this kind of assistance for your case? Read on, and we’ll walk you through what you need to know.
What Does a Personal Injury Lawyer Do?
Personal injury attorneys represent clients who have been injured or damaged as a result of negligent behavior by other parties. This isn’t always due to a car accident – it can be for slip and fall incidents, medical malpractice, construction site incidents, and a wealth of other situations.
However, car accident cases represent a major portion of the personal injury cases that occur each year across the United States. The job of a personal injury lawyer is to represent their client and their interests during the legal proceedings following an accident.
In most cases, the main goal of this process will be to secure a proper amount of compensation for the client. This compensation total will help to cover the damages incurred by the victim of the accident and help to get their life back on track after the interruption.
A car accident attorney isn’t always a necessary hire for a case but will be an essential aid if even a moderate amount of money is at stake.
Insurance companies that are responsible for paying out claims hire their own highly skilled team of lawyers whose aim is to keep payments as little as possible. Without legal aid of your own, it’s easy to go home with much, much less than you really deserve.
There are a great many ways that a car crash attorney can help to make your case a success and defend your interests.
Helps You Understand What Rights You Have
Insurance company attorneys take advantage of the fact that unrepresented victims don’t know the legal playing field. If you don’t know what rights you have and what to stand up for, you can easily be taken advantage of by these larger powers that be.
One of the first things that a car accident attorney will do for you is to make sure that you understand your rights.
An attorney will make sure you’re aware of what responsibilities you have during a case, and more importantly, they will make sure you know what responsibilities you don’t have.
They will help you understand all the relevant laws that apply to your case. Laws surrounding auto accidents offer to vary from state to state, and sometimes even city to city.
For this reason, it can be extremely helpful to have someone on your side who’s well-versed in local laws and can fill you in on the finer details.
You don’t want to be convinced that you have fewer choices than you actually do, and having an attorney at your side will make sure that’s never the case.
On top of this, an experienced attorney can help protect you against the kind of unsavory debt collectors that sometimes start poking around after an expensive accident. They will protect you and educate you about the Fair Debt Collections Act and ensure you aren’t taken advantage of in this arena either.
Will Guide Your Legal Case
If you don’t have any experience handling a legal case, it can be hard to determine what steps to take after something as unexpected as an accident occurs.
You may even get conflicting advice from friends, family, the internet, and so forth – none of it engineered to meet the specific needs of your case.
Whose opinion can you trust? If you have an experienced personal injury lawyer at your side, it’s their take on your case that should really count. They’ve handled cases just like yours dozens and dozens of times in the past (if not more!) and will know exactly what steps you need to take.
They’ll be able to look at the details of your case and immediately spot the needs, obstacles, and opportunities present. They’ll know what actions need to be taken, in what order, and the nuances of how they need to be performed.
They’ll also be familiar with the ins and outs of court culture. That means you won’t miss important deadlines, be confused about how to phrase needs and requests, and you won’t have to struggle with confusingly worded paperwork.
There’s a reason that lawyers go to school for many years – there’s a lot to learn!
You simply cannot beat the level of experience this kind of professional can bring to your case. It simply isn’t worth trying to struggle through a difficult legal case alone.
Take Stress Out of the Equation
The added benefit of having an experienced attorney handling your case, in addition to all the above? It’ll help take the burden of these legal proceedings off of your own shoulders.
The weeks and months after an accident can be a stressful enough time. You may be recovering from injuries and trying to physically get your life back together. You could be away from work for a long time, requiring a lot of effort to catch back up.
Your car might be out of commission for a while, requiring repairs and care to get back on the road. No matter what the situation is, it’s likely one that will require a lot of your mental capacity.
Handling the effort for your own compensation on top of all of this can be exhausting. With an experienced attorney at the wheel, you can rest a little easier knowing your case is well taken care of.
It’s impossible to underrate how much this peace of mind can really be worth. It’s a reason to hire a personal injury lawyer that should not be overlooked.
Value Your Case & Negotiate a Fair Settlement
One thing you’ll quickly realize after an accident occurs is that you don’t actually know how much your case is worth. Putting a dollar amount to the multi-faceted damage that occurs after a car accident be a seriously difficult task.
Yes, some of the costs associated will be a little easier to tally up. The cost of your medical care, automobile repair costs, and lost wages are hard numbers, at the very least.
But how do you put a monetary value to pain and suffering? What about costs that you might incur in the future, after your case? Can you include the cost of your legal fees?
Coming to an actually fair compensation total is much more difficult than you might initially assume. If you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s easy to undervalue your case and end up with much less compensation than you really deserve.
In a more serious situation, this could mean you find yourself without the financial support you need some months or years after your case is settled. You’ll be left with no avenue at this point to get the true support that you need.
This is where a personal injury attorney’s experience comes into play once again. An attorney will have determined the proper compensation value for dozens and dozens of cases prior to yours.
They’ll know exactly what a fair offer from an insurance company should look like. They’ll also know what a lowball offer is and how best to counter it. The insurance company is looking to aid their bottom line, but your attorney will ensure you aren’t lured in by the promise of quick money.
It’s important you get what you really need after an accident, and an attorney will help to make sure you do.
Helps to Gather Evidence
To get the compensation total you deserve, you’ll need to present a strong case. A strong case will show clearly two things: the damages incurred as a result of the accident and the negligence of the other driver that led to these damages.
You’ll need a strong selection of evidence, presented properly, to build your case and present it to the insurance company.
An attorney will be able to help you collect this evidence and present it properly.
Some of it, ideally, will be the evidence you collected from the scene of the accident. That includes photos and videos of the scene of the accident, the placement of the cars, and damage to yourself or your vehicle.
In addition, an attorney can help you track down security footage that may have caught a glimpse of the accident, help set up witness testimony, and gather official police reports.
All of this evidence will be instrumental in painting a clear picture of how the accident occurred.
They’ll also make sure you have the evidence you need to prove the nature of the damages you’ve incurred. They’ll ensure you get everything you need, paperwork-wise, from a doctor to support your medical needs.
They’ll help you collect, organize, and present information from your employer related to your lost wages.
Anything that’s needed to help support your case, they will help source and organize it. An attorney’s experience with these cases will mean they know exactly what you’ll need to gather to have the best shot at securing the compensation total that you’re seeking.
Provide You With Their Professional Rolodex
In addition to everything else, your attorney can help you make the connections you’ll need to handle problems that arise after an accident. An attorney likely has made a number of solid connections after years in the business and can open their professional Rolodex to you.
This might mean recommending a doctor or experienced medical specialist who can help handle your car accident injuries. It could be a referral to an auto mechanic that you know you’ll be able to trust.
They may even bring in certain experts or consultants that can help on your case and provide additional evidence and expertise that you didn’t know was possible to obtain.
Once an attorney comes onto a case, they are there to help you. Their extended network of experienced professionals will likely do the very same.
Reasons to Hire a Personal Injury Lawyer
There’s no denying that a car accident can be a frightening, surprising, and unexpected interruption to your life. If you’ve found yourself recently usurped by this kind of shocking incident, it’s important to take the proper actions to safeguard your future.
There’s a lot to handle after such an accident, but as the above information clearly displays, a personal injury attorney can help a great deal. The above is only a fraction of the many ways this kind of legal professional can help you after a serious accident.
Need more immediate assistance with your car accident case? Looking for more legal advice? Give us a call anytime for assistance.