How Does a Personal Injury Lawyer Spend a Workday?
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Types of Personal-Injury Cases
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Personal injury is a broad umbrella term that encapsulates many more subspecialties of law practice. While some lawyers of other disciplines occasionally take on personal-injury cases that appear promising, many focus on one or more specialty within the field. These types of personal-injury cases include assault and battery, automobile accidents, defamation, libel and slander, dog bites, negligence, premises liability, traumatic brain injury, product liability and wrongful-death litigation. On any given day, a personal-injury lawyer will spend time staying current on the legal, scientific and social developments in the fields related to his cases and specialties.
The Role of a Personal-Injury Lawyer
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It's quite likely that, at any particular time, an attorney will have many separate clients--perhaps dozens--and be at a different place in each case. Naturally, at some point, the attorney must have an initial consult with a new client, even if a member of her staff conducts a prior interview. The first steps of a personal-injury suit involve gathering all the facts as they exist up to that point and collecting all of the documents pertaining to the case. In a personal-injury situation, an experienced lawyer will likely have to work on two fronts: keeping the immediate medicals needs of the client funded and met, and advancing his case for liability. This can mean negotiating with insurance companies or doctors to approve or extend coverage for procedures that might be necessary, or for ongoing care. Any medical-service provider, insurer or other interested party will have to be notified of the attorney's representation, and all paperwork and inquiries will go through the law office instead of the client. If the liable party seeks to settle out of court, the attorney will have to negotiate with them for an appropriate amount that covers all of the client's foreseeable complications, as well as a fee for his time.
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Preparing a Legal Case
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Even if a personal-injury case never goes before a jury, which a great many do not, the lawyer can still spend dozens of hours of legal time preparing the case in the event that it might. This can mean drafting motions for the court, attending hearings and conducting discovery--the phase of the trial in which each side is allowed to ask questions and request documents. A typical discovery request can yield thousands of pages of documents. Preparing a personal-injury case is also likely to involve interviews with witnesses to produce affidavits, and the eliciting of expert testimony in support of the client's claims. In a minority of cases--because either facts remain in dispute or neither side is willing to compromise--a personal-injury attorney might have to actually appear in court before a judge and jury and deliver her best advocacy on behalf of her client.
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- Photo Credit Thierry Geoffroy (CC-BY-SA 3.0)
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Comments
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Richard Hastings
Dec 24, 2009
Attorneys in most, if not all jurisdictions, are precluded from funding their client's medical expenses. They can attempt to have letters of protection accepted by doctors on their clients behalf but cannot pay their medical bills.
