If you’ve ever been in a car accident or dealt with legal paperwork during a tough time, you know how hard it is to manage the legal process. That’s why there are personal injury lawyers who protect your rights in any scenario. If this sounds like something you’re interested in, this article will explain what this team of professionals does to help you.
Who is a Personal Injury Lawyer?
A personal injury lawyer is a lawyer who specializes in providing legal representation to plaintiffs who have allegedly been hurt or injured (physically or psychologically) as a result of some form of carelessness or negligence on the part of another individual, organization, or entity.
“Personal injury attorneys specialize in an area known as tort law,” legal journalist Sally Kane writes. “This covers private or civil wrongs or injuries, including defamation and actions for bad faith breach of contract. The main goal of tort law is to make the injured party whole again and to discourage others from committing the same offense.”
Personal injury lawyers can work on a variety of cases, but some of the most common ones include auto accidents, slip and fall accidents, animal bite injuries, bicycle accidents, boating accidents, defective products, medical malpractice birthing injuries, nursing home abuse, and construction accidents.
4 Interesting Facts
You’ve seen commercials on TV, seen the lawyer ads online and probably driven past their billboards, but if you’ve never personally worked with a personal injury lawyer, you might not know much about them. Here are several interesting facts:
1. The Personal Injury Law Industry is Big
According to TechTimes, there are approximately 800,000 to 1.2 million lawyers in the United States. Of those, somewhere between 93,000 to 135,000 are personal injury lawyers. In other words, more than 10 percent of attorneys practice personal injury law.
One of the reasons for the size of this industry is the growing demand for this sort of representation. There are an estimated 400,000 personal injury cases each year (not even including the millions of injuries stemming from car accidents). And even though just a small fraction of them (roughly 4 percent) ever go to trial, skilled attorneys are usually needed to ensure plaintiffs get the right settlements outside of court.
2. Personal Injury Lawyers Don’t Get Paid Unless You Do
One of the most interesting things about working with a personal injury attorney is that you don’t owe them a dime unless they help you recover money as part of your claim.
Personal injury lawyers work on a contingency fee basis. This means their fee is contingent/dependent on them being able to secure a settlement or positive verdict in your case. If they’re unable to, you don’t owe them anything for their time. If they do help you recover money, they generally charge a fee somewhere in the neighborhood of 33 percent.
3. Good Personal Injury Lawyers Are Worth Every Penny
Don’t underestimate the importance of hiring a good personal injury lawyer. While they might charge what you consider to be a steep fee when winning a case, the reality is that they bring a ton of value to the table that you simply wouldn’t have if you were representing yourself.
A good personal injury lawyer is worth every penny they charge. Take the Matthews Injury Law team as an example. They’ve recently helped a client get a $60 million verdict for a car accident and $11 million for a wrongful death case. They’ve also helped settle cases with insurance companies for $5.4 million (motorcycle accident) and $4 million (auto accident). These are figures that individuals wouldn’t be able to sniff if it weren’t for experienced legal counsel.
4. Most Personal Injury Cases Don’t Go to Trial
Did you know that just four to five percent of personal injury cases ever go to trial? That means roughly 95 percent of all cases are settled outside of court. This makes personal injury lawyers some of the best and most skilled negotiators in the world. They’re able to go toe-to-toe with greedy insurance companies who have thousands of employees on the payroll and extract six-, seven-, eight-, and even nine-figure sums on behalf of their clients.
Putting it All Together
Next time you see a personal injury advertisement – or the next time you need a personal injury attorney to represent you in a case – remember that there’s more to them than initially meets the eye!