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Question: When I meet my personal injury lawyer for the first time, are there any particular documents I should bring with me? Answer: You should supply your attorney with as much information as possible. If your attorney has more information, he will be better able to properly advise you of your legal rights. You need to bring in all documents pertaining to your case. The accident report is a very important document that you should bring your attorney. Article by attorney David Slepkow (401) 437-1100. Also, if you have any eye witness statements or medical records or reports from your doctors, you should bring those to your lawyer. If you have any photographs of the accident or of your injury, please bring those to the attorney meeting. If you don't have the documentation, your attorney may collect the documents for you. Question: What type of information will the attorney request at the initial consultation concerning my Rhode Island personal injury or automobile accident case? Answer: Your attorney will request general information related to your medical treatment. The attorney will attempt to compile a list of the name and address of all treating physicians and medical providers. This includes physical therapists, chiropractors, visiting nurses and other medical providers. The attorney may also ask you for a list of prior medical providers. Question: What usually happens at the first consultation: Answer: The personal injury lawyer that you have selected will tell you whether you have a valid legal claim. If you decide to hire that lawyer, then the lawyer will request that you sign a retainer agreement. The retainer agreement is an important legal document which a lawyer is required to obtain. At the initial consultation, it is extremely difficult for your lawyer to tell you the value of your case. The value of your case is dependent on many circumstances which include the amount of your medical bills, and the nature and extent of any pain and suffering. The value may be depend on whether or not your injury is permanent, whether or not there were periods of partial or complete disability, whether or not there was any disfigurement, scarring or other physical injury and the amount of your lost wages, etc. After you have completed treatment or have reached a certain point in your medical treatment, the lawyer will provide a settlement demand with all relevant medical records and documentation to the insurance adjuster. If the insurance company believes the claim has merit and the insurance adjuster and the attorney can agree on a figure, then the case will be settled out of court. Despite the fact that the attorney will attempt to settle the case, the attorney will be preparing the case for court in the event that the case does not settle. Question: What is necessary to have a valid personal injury case? Answer: If you were injured as a result of another person's or entity's negligence or intentional act, then you have a potential personal injury cause of action. It is not always required to have a physical injury to bring a personal injury lawsuit. A personal injury lawsuit can be pursued based on the diminution of your reputation or an intentional infliction of emotional distress. Question: What exactly is a settlement in a personal injury case? Answer: If you settle a Rhode Island personal injury car accident or slip and fall case, you are agreeing to accept a sum of money in exchange for either not pursuing a personal injury case against the person or entity or dismissing a personal injury case against a person or entity. If the case settles, you will need to sign a release releasing any parties of any potential future liability. In order to determine whether or not you should accept a personal injury settlement, your attorney needs to assess the amount of damages you have suffered, the likelihood of prevailing at trial, and any other factors that the attorney deems appropriate. A settlement can be reached at any time prior to the filing of the lawsuit or after the lawsuit is filed and any time up until the jury's verdict. The case can even be settled after the trial if the case is on appeal. At Slepkow, Slepkow & Associates, Inc. it is our firm philosophy that it is the client's decision on whether or not to accept a personal injury settlement. We will certainly help you in making that determination by providing all of the essential information and answering any relevant questions that you have. We often will give our recommendation as to whether or not a settlement is fair. We always let our clients make the final decision whether or not to accept a personal injury or auto accident settlement. Question: What if I am unhappy with the lawyer who is handling my case? In Rhode Island, do I have the right to obtain a new lawyer? If I obtain a new lawyer who will pay for the legal services rendered by the old attorney? Answer: In Rhode Island (RI), if you are dissatisfied with your attorney's legal representation, you have the right to obtain a new attorney at any time. Your old attorney may have a statutory lien against your personal injury case. If you prevail or the case is settled, your old attorney will have a right to be paid for the legal services that he provided you. However, you will not be required to pay the old attorney upon obtaining a new attorney. When your case is settled or when you receive funds as a result of a verdict, the old and the new attorney will equitably divide the contingent legal fee. In other words, it will cost you no additional funds, if you retain a new attorney. The old and new attorneys must come to an agreement as to the equitable share to be received by the old attorney. Question: Is it a good idea to wait a period of time before I hire an attorney? Answer: You should contact a Rhode Island personal injury attorney immediately after the accident. It is not a good idea for a person to be dealing with the insurance adjuster concerning their personal injury or car accident claim. Question: Am I required to give a recorded statement to the insurance company upon their request? Answer: There is no legal requirement for you to give a recorded statement to an insurance adjuster. However, if the insurance company is your own insurance company, you may be contractually obligated to give a recorded statement. You should not give any statement unless you have legal representation present and you should acquire a copy of the transcript. Question: What types of cases are typically handled on a contingent fee basis? Answer: Car/auto accidents, slip & fall, trip & fall, premises liability, bicycle accidents, motorcycle accidents, boating accidents, truck accidents, pedestrian accidents, wrongful death, uninsured or underinsured, motorist claims, intentional infliction of emotional distress, dog bite claims, etc Lawyers, even the best ones, often do not enjoy collecting judgments resulting from the lawsuits that they have successfully litigated. What options do you have when your lawyer cannot or will not collect your judgment? The simple answer is to find another lawyer, because there are many sharp lawyers that recover judgments. My articles are my opinions, and not legal advice. I am a Judgment Broker, and am not a lawyer. If you ever need any legal advice or a strategy to use, please contact a lawyer. What often happens, is someone hires a great attorney that wins their lawsuit, and then their lawyer says "we won, congratulations!" However, after the court victory, little or nothing seems to happen toward collecting their judgment money. As time goes by, it seems that getting paid what is due on their money judgment is just a dream. Usually, when hiring a lawyer to recover a judgment, one must pay them their retainer, all expenses, and then by the hour. When a judgment debtor seems wealthy, or an attorney gets to keep most of what is recovered, attorneys may agree to take judgment recovery cases on a contingency basis. Ideally, your attorney will be as aggressive collecting your judgment as they were winning it, yet this does not always happen. Worse yet, if you suddenly "fire" your contingency lawyer, you might owe them a lot of money because of Quantum Merit (sometimes spelled Meruit) contract clauses. This clause is in the retainer agreements of most contingency collection lawyers, where they get paid for the work they did, if you insist on firing them. If you paid your lawyer by the hour to win your lawsuit, after the judgment is won, your lawyer will probably think their job is complete, and usually it will be, as per your contract with them. Either you will have to pay them more per hour, to have them try to enforce your judgment, or hope they will work on a contingency basis to recover your judgment. Perhaps your attorney simply does not know how to collect your judgment, or they just prefer not to. When your attorney is done, and is no longer working on your lawsuit after it has been converted into a judgment, it is a good idea to check with the court and see whether your attorney has already released themselves as the attorney of record for your judgment. If not, ask your attorney to file papers with the court, to have themselves removed as the attorney of record for your judgment. When this is done, you will then be the legal owner and the sole representative for your judgment, and can do with it what circumstances allow. What if you have hired an attorney and they are not aggressively trying to collect your judgment for you? If you have retained an attorney to recover your judgment and they are not making progress, ask them about it, at least once a year. Email is great. Do not ask more often than three times a year, as judgment recovery is often similar to a long-term chess game. There may be very logical reasons why no real progress has been made, especially in our current economy. If you have any ideas about some possible assets of your judgment debtor, or ways of possibly recovering the judgment money, share them with your lawyer. What if you are dissatisfied with the answers you hear from your lawyer, or the results so far? Remember, if the judgment debtor is really poor or has too cleverly hidden their assets, it is not the lawyer's or any other recovery expert's fault that a recovery has not been made. If you have been paying your lawyer by the hour, and especially if you are current and do not owe them any money from past invoices, this is easy; just tell them you wish them to stop working on your judgment and remove themselves as the attorney of record. If your attorney is working on a contingency basis, choosing to fire them is usually much more complicated. You might owe them money because of quantum merit clauses in retainer agreements, where the lawyer gets paid get for the work they did before you fired them. Perhaps you can reach a compromise for what you owe them on their quantum merit clause. If your lawyer is not trying to get your judgment paid; you can probably find another lawyer, recovery expert, or company, to try to recover your judgment. There are many good lawyers that are experts at recovering judgments. Judgment brokers can steer you to the best contingency lawyers, recovery experts, and judgment buyers. Note that judgments never sell for cash upfront for very much. Lawyers and Attorneys consistently get a bad rap from public opinion. Why is that? Most Lawyers are just people with a profession like you that only want to make an honest buck. Just because a small portion represents huge corporate interests that are unpopular the general public has demonized them. I hope to provide you in this article some of the Myths about Lawyers that consistently get passed by word of mouth without any facts to back them up. Lawyers are one of the cornerstones of business, if we didn't have them criminals would go free and innocents would be executed. 1. All Lawyers are Sharks - The truth is that they are in a very competitive business that requires heated debate as its hallmark. Some take this so far as to manipulate circumstances to appear as they wish or force higher settlements but that is a small group. There are thieves in America but do we assume all American's are thieves? Most lawyers are honest men and women trying to make a difference in the legal systems of their communities. 2. Lawyers are Overpaid - Often lawyers are actually far underpaid for their services. The average court case requires a lot more than what you see in the courtroom. Legal documentation can be some of the most tedious reading ever, they can take a long time to review and to make sure they missed nothing. Before ever stepping foot in the court they have to interview you, design a brief for the judge, outline their case and review all legal documentation and evidence. This amounts to hundreds of hours usually, even a burger flipper would get a few thousand dollars for that amount of time and effort. 3. Attorneys Try to Draw Out Cases - This is entirely on a person to person basis and exists in every industry, your mechanic does it, your employees do it etc. Most Attorneys have so many cases that resolving them all in a quick manner would be refreshing, often they have finished dozens of other cases before managing to put together a brief for a complicated one. The majority of the time this isn't because of malice or avarice, it is because the case is very complex and requires many legal hoops to be jumped through. 4. All Good Lawyers are Loud & Boistrous - This isn't always the case, a lot of the "magic" they perform is paperwork and hours of intense study. The news has sensationalized the image of the lawyer banging his fists and nearly committing contempt in order to achieve true justice. The true crusaders of the endless litigation battle do most of their work in the quiet of their offices. Often times they don't even get a half an hours worth of time to speak their case. Passion for justice and their client's cases is great, but it isn't always exemplified by boisterous natures. 5. Lawyers All Hate Each other - Sometimes in the motions of a court hearing one of the lawyers gets succinctly defeated in a way that damages his reputation. This causes him to lose business and in turn revenue. This will cause animosity in any industry but it does not mean that all Lawyers burn their bridges, if that were true there would be no firms or partnerships. Often times the nature of the legal system causes many lawyers to work together in many scenarios and then face eachother as opposition the next year. There is a certain camaraderie between Lawyers in most larger cities. They are competitors in the same way sports stars are, when the games done most hold no hard feelings over who won or lost, it's the fans that get furious with eachother, just as clients do for Lawyers. 6. Every Attorney has About the Same Training - This is completely untrue and makes it seem as though only experience makes a lawyer competent. In reality the situation is far more complicated than it may seem, A Probate or Estate Attorney will not necessarily be a competent Defense Attorney. Also location and available resources dictate a lot of how well educated a Lawyer is when they leave law school. If they lived in an area with a large population and lots of seminars they are likely to be better trained than someone that practices in a small city. Also laws change so frequently that age may even cause an issue because they may work on the basis of old laws. 7. You Don't Need an Attorney - Wrong. The insurance industry wants us to believe that lawyers are an unnecessary bump in the legal system; they just want to keep more of your settlement money. They have entire divisions within their companies designed to cut payouts to the minimum necessary. Even outside of that some people think taking it upon themselves to run their own defense is intelligent. Do they honestly think that they know the legalities of our complicated system better than someone who deals with it on a daily basis? A lawyer is going to have resources and information that would not be easily available or apparent to the common citizen. 8. If I Already Have an Offer I Don't Want An Attorney - Some people find themselves not wanting to talk to a Lawyer once they see the sum of money they are being offered, afraid the Lawyer will take a large portion. The common fee is in excess of 1/3 after all, but with a Lawyer on your side you may find your settlement offer gets much larger. Often you will not make claims for items because you are unsure if you legally qualify, a good Personal Injury Attorney will be able to find those items you missed and most of the time makes the increased amount far greater than that of the original offer. 9. Insurance Rates Are Going Up Because of Lawsuits - This is being painted in a bad light, of course insurance rates are going up but that is not through fault of the Lawyer, it is the high profit margins the Insurance Industry demands that cause this ever increasing rate. Frivolous lawsuits are not caused by the Lawyers but by their clientele's demands and deceits. Insurance Companies will use any factor they can to increase rates justifiably and legal costs is an easy scapegoat. 10. Trial Attorneys Charge Hourly - Some Attorneys do charge an hourly rate but this is far from standard practice, there is a precedent that was made only decades after the founding of our country that made it so anyone could obtain representation by paying a percentage of their award at the end of trial. They do this at great risk, they could end up spending months fighting a case that their client lied about to them and they make no money for their hard work. One industry or another designed these myths, they benefit from you being afraid to approach a Lawyer. These industries see huge profits from cutting legal fees out of their budgeting, if they can get you to fear a lawyer then when they tell you that they think you don't need one you will listen. The worst thing you can possibly do is decide not to seek legal representation, your opponents will not be so foolish, though many industries tell you not to get a Lawyer they will always use a Lawyer's services for themselves. Attorneys are just normal people with a complicated profession, no different from many professions. They are providing a valuable service and I for one do not want to have to read up on all the articles of law regarding breaking my ankle on a college campus if such a situation were to happen. So don't fear them, consult them for sagely advise as you would any expert of any particular field.