Getting in an accident and suffering a serious injury isn’t just about the physical trauma for victims. As you begin your medical journey back to full health, your levels of worry, frustration, and emotional turmoil can be off the charts.
After placing your injury case in the hands of a personal injury lawyer, it’s understandable that you’d feel more at ease getting regular updates on the status of your claim. You should be alerted to every change in your case while you attempt to get compensation from the person responsible for your accident. But how often should you contact your attorney? And how often should he or she update you?
How Often Should I Call My Personal Injury Attorney?
If you or a loved one are injured due to someone’s negligence, it’s vital that you speak with a legal professional about your case as soon as possible. You may not end up needing an attorney, but without speaking to an expert, you could allow an insurance company to shortchange you by thousands of dollars.
Once you’ve signed an agreement to allow a personal injury lawyer to represent your accident case, you might wonder how often you should talk back and forth.
The bottom line is that the attorney works for you and has agreed to be your most dedicated supporter throughout your recovery and your insurance claim. Reputable and skilled lawyers should be ready to answer your questions at any time. If they don’t have an immediate answer, they should get back to you with more information as soon as possible.
Personal Injury Attorney Contact During Recovery
As a general rule of thumb, you might not need to contact your attorney very often while you are still early on in your healing process. Your attorney will want to check in on you while you recover and ensure you are receiving proper treatment, but there isn’t much they can do from a legal perspective until your recovery is further along.
Personal injury bodily injury demand letters aren’t typically sent to an insurance company until you’ve completely healed from your injuries or reached a plateau in treatment. It’s hard to know how much compensation to demand from the insurance company until all of the medical bills and records are received and analyzed.
When your recovery is complete or your injury has reached “maximum medical improvement,” meaning you have a permanent injury that won’t heal any further, you and your attorney can send a settlement demand package and file a lawsuit, if necessary. Your contact with your attorney back and forth will likely increase as you get word of a settlement offer made by an insurance company. You may also be in regular contact if a lawsuit is filed against an at-fault defendant when their insurance company refuses to settle for fair value.
Times You Should Call Your Attorney
Once your personal injury case starts to progress, there are many changes and updates in your case that may make a call to your personal injury lawyer necessary.
Here are a few situations that warrant a call to your personal injury attorney:
- Changes in your medical condition. New recommendations from your doctors.
- When you discover you’ll miss more time at work due to your injury.
- The discovery of new evidence or remembering an important detail about your accident that you had forgotten.
- New receipts or records to turn in to your legal representative.
- When an important question arises about your case.
Times a Good Attorney Will Call You
Any good personal injury attorney will make it a priority to call you with updates as well. You should hear from your legal counsel when:
- The attorney uncovers new evidence in your personal injury case.
- A new settlement offer has been received.
- Settlement money arrives.
- When important deadlines are approaching.
Finding the Right Personal Injury Attorney for Your Case
After suffering an injury caused by someone’s carelessness, you should seek a legal representative who has extensive experience with California law. They should also have examples of case success easily found on his or her website.
Lawyers should exhibit genuine care and compassion for what you’ve been through and remain good listeners when you go over what happened.
Keeping you up-to-date on where your case stands is another sign that you’ve made the right choice in a legal professional. Each call and update you receive shows the level of commitment the attorney has invested in your well-being and your case.
Contact a Personal Injury Lawyer Serving Southern California Victims
Choosing a skilled personal injury attorney greatly affects the care and attention you receive. It may also make an enormous difference in the support that you ultimately receive for your accident case.
If you are in the middle of a difficult and expensive medical recovery and in need of real help, we hope that you’ll consider trusting your case to the Law Offices of Steers & Associates. Our legal team works tirelessly to defeat the tactics of insurance companies bent on limiting the support you receive.
Contact Allen Vaysberg and the Law Offices of Steers & Associates for a free consultation to find out how we can help you.
