What You Need to Know to Practice Injury Law
In the litigious 21st century the legal profession has never been more important because the number of legal cases keeps on rising year after year. In this day and age, there is always somebody to blame for a personal injury or a road traffic accident and this has meant that the demand for high-quality lawyers has shot through the roof. It is not easy to get into the legal profession, however, because it takes many years of hard study at college or university before completing your education at a professional firm.
Once qualified, there is nothing more important than gaining experience to understand how the courts view contentious cases so that you can advise your clients accordingly. If you wish to specialise in and then practice injury law, then there are several basic points that are crucial if you want to make a success of your new career, so here we are going to take a look at what you need to know to practice injury law.
Is a settlement possible?
When a client brings a new case to your practice one of the first questions you must ask yourself is whether a settlement is achievable because if not it is best to be open and honest with your client and explain to them why you cannot take the case forward. If a settlement is possible you also need to use your judgement and experience to estimate the likely settlement amount and the time it will take to reach that settlement.
Your time is worth money so if the settlement amount doesn’t cover your costs, then there is no point proceeding with the case as you will not earn anything for your time. If you want to keep your clients happy and make a living for yourself, it is far better to be honest from the outset, and this way positive word of mouth will also spread helping you to achieve more referrals.
Who is liable?
Once you have heard all the facts surrounding a potential case from your client, it is then important to be objective about where the blame lies. Sometimes your client will appear anxious and stressed and will be demanding compensation when in reality they are just angry at themselves as they are to blame for their predicament. On the other hand, if your client was clearly injured as a result of negligence in the workplace by their employer then it is pretty clear cut where blame lies, and this would be a good case to take forward to try and reach a positive settlement. Always assess where you believe the blame lies because your experience will often give you an answer that could save a lot of time and effort in the future.
Assess your client
It may seem pretty callous but it is crucial that you carry out an in-depth assessment of your client in the USA before you decide whether to take on their case or not. Professional personal injury lawyers in Dallas advise that credibility is key in the eyes of any judge or jury and that if a judge has the slightest inkling that a defendant isn’t credible then they will throw the case out. It is important, therefore, to develop the skill of reading people, and this is something that will only come from experience.
You should also manage the expectation of your client because they will have seen TV shows that paint a picture of huge six or seven-figure compensation amounts when in reality these levels are only awarded in the most life-changing of cases.
As a big part of this, it’s also worth considering the type of injury that your potential clients have sustained. A repetitive stress injury lawyer will often have a harder job than a lawyer that deals with injuries that come as a result of a single accident. It can be harder to prove liability when an injury builds over time, and this is something that is well worth keeping in mind.
What is my workload?
Some cases are very straightforward and from the outset, there is a clear path to a settlement because there is no doubt where the blame lies. However, as any experienced attorney will tell you, this is rarely the case. Most cases will take time, and how much time needs to be carefully considered not just from a financial point of view, but also from a workload point of view because more cases mean more of your time.
It is often impossible to achieve economies of scale in the legal world, so although it is highly desirable to have more clients, you need to assess whether it is better to have fewer clients with a higher chance of success, rather than more clients with whom you will have to spread yourself thinly diminishing the likelihood of positive results.
As we have learned there are key things that you must know in order to practice injury law. Assessing the likelihood of winning a case is important during the early stages, as is culpability. If there is no chance of succeeding it is better to stop early than waste time and money. Assess your client because they need to show absolute credibility and manage your workload in order to give yourself the best chance of winning your cases. If you are well versed in these practices you will give yourself a great chance of succeeding as an injury lawyer.
