The quick and easy answer is, if you are in a wreck and you are hurt and get treatment, you most likely need to hire a personal injury attorney!!! There are many aspects to a personal injury claim, that personal injury attorneys, depending on their years of experience, have dealt with, on numerous occasions. When dealing with a personal injury claim, there are many aspects that the general public does not even know exists, much less have experience in handling them.
1. Education
When someone graduates from law school, they receive a Juris Doctorate, so they are technically doctors of the law! A law school graduate spent 2.5 to 4 (on average) years, learning about the law. The amount of reading that a law student must complete is STAGGERING. Before I started law school, I LOVED to read, for pleasure. After I finished law school, the only book that I read, consistently, for at least a year, was the Bible! This MASSIVE amount of reading leads to increased knowledge and this increased knowledge comes in very handy when dealing with an insurance adjuster, on a claim from a car wreck or motorcycle wreck. Law students are also blessed to be taught by VERY intelligent law professors and as law students, we draw on, grow, and learn from the experiences of the professors. By the time a law student finishes law school, complete their bar course studies, and sit for the bar exam, they have learned more about the law than any individual could ever want to know. Again, this knowledge is very helpful when dealing with insurance adjusters and increasing the value of a car wreck claim or motorcycle accident claim.
2. Negligent driver choices
If you choose a personal injury attorney with experience, they should have a knowledge base and skill set that you just won’t. That is not a vain statement; plumbers, electricians, auto mechanics, doctors…these professionals all have skill sets that the average Joe does not; that is why we go to them for the things that we know they can do for us. Same thing with a personal injury attorney, there are things about negligent drivers and the choices of negligent drivers, that if they are factors in your wreck, can increase the value of your claim. Typically, if you are hit by a drunk driver, your claim should be worth more. Typically, if you are hit by someone who is texting and driving, your claim should be worth more. There are probably thousands of situations or factors, that can increase the value of your claim, but since most people have never been in a car wreck or motorcycle wreck, they do not know about these factors and personal injury attorneys do! Another reason, why, if you are in a wreck and you are hurt and get treatment, you most likely need to hire a personal injury attorney.
3. Special information about the injured victim
There are also certain situations, where your past, especially your past medical history, could have a great effect on the value of your claim. If you have what’s called a “pre-existing condition” and the car wreck or motorcycle wreck “aggravates” or “exacerbates” that condition, this is typically something you want to let the adjuster know about, because their negligent insured has caused a bad situation to be worse. Also, you could have health conditions that do not allow you to receive the treatment you need, for the injuries caused by the motorcycle wreck or car wreck. This means that you would just have to suffer with the pain, possibly forever. As you can see, being forced to live in pain, for the rest of your life, due to a negligent driver, would increase the value of your claim. As above, there are thousands of situations, like these, that could increase the value of your claim, that a personal injury attorney should know about, but if you have never been in a wreck, most likely, you will not know about these claim value-increasing nuggets.
4. Experience
Experience…I think this is the most important reason that you should hire a personal injury attorney, if you were in a wreck and you are hurt and get treatment. There are so many aspects to so many elements of a claim, that only experience will help and even allow you to know the right and best choices to make. I could write a list, with over a thousand items, that I, as a personal injury attorney, have learned, from almost 20 years of working with car accident and motorcycle accident victims. Before I worked in a law office, I did not know that when you go to the emergency room, there are typically 3 bills; there is a bill for the hospital, a bill for the emergency room doctor, and if you had x-rays, there is a bill for the provider that read your x-rays. If you have health insurance, you might not ever see any of those bills and typically, would only know to request the bill from the hospital, so you would be shorting yourself on damages, because you would not have the emergency room physician bill and the radiology bill to present to the claim adjuster. Another thing that I learned, when working in a law office, helping personal injury victims, is that, in the state of Texas, if your automobile insurance agent does not have you sign a Personal Injury Protection rejection and/or Uninsured Motorist rejection, your carrier must provide you the minimum benefits, even if you did not pay for that coverage. This presents another situation where you could lose out on benefits because you did not know the law, another situation where hiring a personal injury attorney would be to your benefit.
Remember, if you are in a wreck and are dealing with a personal injury claim, it is better to get an attorney sooner, rather than later. The longer you try to handle the claim on your own, the more tools you potentially take away from your personal injury attorney. As we all know, plumbers should fix our pipes, electricians should take care of our electrical issues, and personal injury attorneys should handle your personal injury claims.
Stay safe!