So you want to hire an attorney for your car accident, but you wonder…. What is it exactly that we’ll be doing for you?
Our work begins on the first day. We will meet with you, work through our intake gathering important facts and details about you and your case, and then we hit the ground running.
Within the first days of your case, we’ll have the police report (if one exists – many very viable personal injury cases don’t have a corresponding police report), medical records, property damage and vehicle photographs, estimates, and we will have notified each involved insurance company that we represent you.
Once the insurance company receives our “letter of representation” they can’t connect with you anymore. This includes calls, emails, texts, or any contact whatsoever. Now that you have an attorney the insurance adjuster and defense lawyers must work through your attorney. This is a tremendous asset to a client because it removes the very real worry and possibility that the “other side’s” insurance adjusters will call you for recorded statements, trick you into untruthful answers, etc.
Early on your case, our office will connect with valuable witnesses and collect what is known as “public disclosure”, which returns names and numbers of people who saw your accident and called 911 but didn’t stop to wait for the police. This is a tremendous leg up on the insurance industry, as they typically don’t go to the lengths to request it. We will connect with these people, listen to their account of how your accident occurred, and get to work securing helpful declarations for your case.
Our office is unique from others in that we have systems that ensure we are connecting with you throughout the case so you never wonder “what’s going on?”. The number one complaint we hear about other law firms is that they don’t keep their clients well informed on what is going on with their case, particularly throughout the first phase of your case.
Your case will have four phases in our office — treatment, evaluation, negotiation, and resolution.
TREATMENT
This is the most vital phase of your case and the one that is overlooked the most by other law firms. We believe it is pivotal to play an active role in helping you receive treatment, ensuring that no “gaps in care” develop that the insurance company will later use against you, and to coordinate with your medical team to be sure nothing is missed along the way during your case, particularly ongoing symptoms that haven’t been diagnosed or explored with advanced imaging. We believe strongly that cases resolve best when the injured person has been returned to health.
EVALUATION
Once you have returned to health with the help of medical professionals capable of treating your traumatic injuries, we set off to evaluate your case. Our office will measure what similar cases resolved for in settlements, mediations, arbitrations, and jury trials around the Pacific Northwest, and provide an evaluation of what your case is truly worth, taking into consideration each nuanced detail.
NEGOTIATION
After sharing your case evaluation with you, we will get your blessing to enter into negotiations with the insurance company. This typically begins with a settlement demand to the insurance carrier, where we give them the chance to evaluate your case and meet our demand or present an offer. Through tireless negotiations fighting as your advocate, we are typically able to resolve most cases at this phase. For those that don’t resolve, we file a lawsuit and begin the path towards a jury trial or arbitration.
RESOLUTION
Be it through settlement, a jury trial, or all the means of resolution in between, our office will not rest until you see justice. We will work tirelessly for you to ensure a positive outcome for your individual case. Like thousands before you, we want to ensure you leave our office with full satisfaction in the work we’ve done for you.
Questions on any of the above? Connect with us now at (800) 928-5486 or by emailing us at advice@SeattleInjuryLaw.com, rob@SeattleInjuryLaw.com or casey@SeattleInjurylaw.com