by Robert Montgomery
The answer is yes most of the time but it depends on the type of case you have. If your case is a small dollar value case, then you can probably get by on your own without having to use a lawyer. However, knowing whether you have a small or big dollar case may be an issue you want to discuss with a lawyer.
Describing a case as small is not meant to diminish it in any way since all cases are important to the people injured. However, our legal system cannot restore your health. All it can do is require the party at fault to pay you some money in return for your damages. So small means what you should be able to realistically expect to receive for your damages.
Some criteria to determine if your case might be considered a small case include the following: (1) your vehicle was only lightly damaged, (2) the medical treatment was for a soft tissue injury with no fractures or broken bones, (3) the bills were not more than $3,000 to $5,000, and (4) your injuries were not permanent.
Typical cases that might qualify as small cases are typically rear-end collisions where there is only damage to the rear bumper that is less than $1,000.00; where the injured person only saw a chiropractor and was diagnosed as having a soft tissue injury and recovered fairly quickly with no long-term permanent effects. These are the type of cases that people often settle for themselves.
If you have a small case, and your bills are more than $3,000 to $5,000, you will first want to finish your treatment and get released from your doctor. Frequently doctors, such as chiropractors, will tell you that you have reached maximum medical improvement, or MMI. At this point, they will release you from treatment and tell you to come back if you have any problems. Once you are released, you will want to collect the bills and records from all medical providers who have treated you for your injury. If you were initially transported by ambulance and were treated in the ER of the hospital, you will want to collect these records as well.
After you have collected your records, you will want to write a letter to the insurance company with your demand or request for settlement. In your letter, you should ask to be reimbursed for your medical bills (and future medical bills if applicable) as well as the pain and suffering you went through and/or expect to go through in the future. You can present your own offer or ask them to make you an offer. The insurance company will then contact you and give you their offer. In most cases, their offer will be less than what you were hoping for. You are free at that point to make a counter offer and to negotiate with them.
For example, the insurance company might say that they will settle your case for the cost of medical bills plus $500 to $1,000 for your pain and suffering. They might offer you less or maybe more. But this is probably in the range of what you might see if you negotiate with them directly for this kind of small case. If you are negotiating a larger case, you should expect more than this. Some law firms offer a free service where they will review the offer from the insurance company, compare it against your records, and let you know whether the insurance company is making a fair offer or not.
Most of the time it will be your advantage to have an attorney handle your account in a larger dollar value case. This is true even when the attorney charges their typical 1/3 contingency fee. A study that was done in 1999 by the Insurance Research Counsel, found that people who used a lawyer for their personal injury claims received on average 3 1/2 times more compensation than those persons who settled their own cases.
If your case is a larger dollar amount case, you can ask the attorney whether they will make certain that you receive at least as much as offered by the insurance company. Our practice is to insure our clients get at least as much as offered by the insurance company before our involvement or we will cut our fee to make that happen. This means the client will end up with more money in their pocket than if they had done it alone. This is a good thing to ask the attorney you are thinking of using.