Review by Client Seriously Injured in Car AccidentSome people are intimidated about contacting a law firm and starting a legal case. We want to talk to you and work to make working with us as easy and friendly as possible. If you call during normal business hours you will usually be greeted by one of our friendly receptionists. They try to pick up quickly but do have multiple phone lines to answer. So if it takes them a little while to get to your call or if they have to put you on hold briefly please understand. We want to talk to you so please do not hang up. If you contact us outside normal business hours please leave a voice mail or provide your information through the “Contact Us” form on this site.
At some firms after first speaking with a receptionist, your call may be forwarded to a screener, paralegal or junior attorney. We work hard to provide high quality legal representation specifically focused on car and other vehicle accident cases and have satisfied clients. So to start things off right, rather than have you talk to a screener or junior lawyer, you get direct access to Lawrence Flick, our Senior Attorney and Litigation Director, a lawyer with more than 30 years of legal experience.
Part of providing the high quality client experience and results that you want is to try to make sure that your car wreck case is a good match for the experience, skills, resources and capabilities we can deliver. We believe that our Senior Attorney and Litigation Director is in the best position to evaluate this. That’s why we give you direct access to him. Please understand that he has other responsibilities like court appearances, client meetings and other duties. So, if he is not immediately available to take your phone call, please leave a message. He makes it a priority to return phone calls from potential clients by the next business day.
Much as we would like to help everybody, unfortunately some car accident cases are not a good match for what we can deliver. Please do not take this as any reflection on your claim. If this appears to be the case, we may be able to suggest some resources through which you may be able to locate another automotive accident attorney.
If it appears that your case is a good match for what we can deliver we will arrange an initial office conference. Until we actually sign a legal services agreement where you agree to hire us and we agree to take your car wreck case, there is no obligation on either side.
Initial Office Conference
During our initial office conference we will want to discuss your car crash in much greater detail. We will review the police accident report for your car crash, assuming it has been obtained, talk with you in depth about exactly how your car accident happened and the events immediately before, during and after it. If you know of any witnesses who were present during the car wreck or at the scene immediately thereafter we will need to know who they are and their contact information. We will want to know if either driver was ticketed and if so, for what.
Medical Information
We will also need to talk in detail about the injuries you sustained in your car accident, any medical treatment that you had at the scene, subsequently in the emergency room and any follow-up care from doctors or other health care providers. You need to tell us about the specific injuries your car crash caused, how those injuries happened, your diagnosis, treatment you have had for them, the current condition of your injuries, how they are affecting you and additional or ongoing treatment that you are having or are recommended to have.
Please bring any emergency room discharge documents that that you may have been given, documents provided at other medical appointments, any medical bills and car and/or medical insurance paperwork that you have received. Try also to remember all medical providers who have treated you, any pharmacies that you have obtained medication from and the name of any companies that provided medical equipment for your use.
We need a complete list of medical providers who treated your injuries from the car wreck. As part of moving forward with your car accident case, we will need to obtain a complete set of medical records and bills for all care and medications that you received as well as any medical equipment, like wheelchairs or crutches, you used while you recovered. So, the first step in this process is identifying all providers who treated you, provided medication or medical equipment.
You will need to sign medical authorizations allowing your medical providers to provide us copies of your medical bills and records. These are required by federal law (HIPAA). Under HIPAA, the providers must be specifically listed in the medical authorization so having a complete list of all your providers at our initial appointment helps speed up the process of collecting your medical records.
Unpaid Medical Bills
If some or all of the medical bills for treatment of injuries sustained in your car crash are unpaid please let us know at the initial appointment. We know that phone calls from medical providers and collection agencies for payment can be irritating. We may be able to get your car insurance and/or medical insurance company to pay part or all of these bills far in advance of resolving your car accident injury claim.
Pictures of Damage to Your Car
Car insurance companies often use the amount of physical damage to your car as one factor in estimating how seriously you were injured in your car wreck and evaluating your car wreck claim. In car crashes involving minimal to no physical damage to your car, insurance companies have often been known to question how you could have been injured in such an auto accident. To start to document this aspect of your car accident case, we will need to see and get copies of any cell phone or other photographs or video that you took at the scene of the car crash, of the damage to your car and other vehicles involved.
We will probably also want to take our own photographs of your car. If your car wreck case goes to trial, it may be necessary to blow up these photographs into large courtroom size exhibits. The camera on some cellphones (especially older ones) may not take high enough resolution photographs to be enlarged into high quality large courtroom size exhibits. So, if possible, we prefer to take our own pictures using a camera with enough megapixels to produce good looking courtroom exhibits.
If your car is safely and legally drivable, bringing it when you come to your appointment will speed up the process by letting us take our own photographs of damage to the car at that time. If your car is not drivable we can arrange to obtain photographs of the physical damage at other locations.
Lost Income
We will want to discuss whether you have lost time from work, the value of that lost time and if the injuries you sustained in your car accident are likely to be limit your ability to do your job. This information helps us evaluate whether you have a claim for past or future lost income. Also, if you have lost income due to time missed from work on account of your car wreck, in some cases we arrange for your car insurance company to compensate you for some of this lost income well ahead of trying to settle your car accident case. We may also ask you to sign employment authorizations that allow us to obtain copies of your employment records.
We will also need to sign a written legal services agreement where we agree to work together on your car crash case. Some of the information covered in this agreement is a brief description of your car accident claim, the work we will be doing for you, legal fees, case expenses and other items.
Work Starts on Your Case
Once this agreement is signed we will start working on your car wreck claim. One of the first things we will do is send written notification to the other driver’s car insurance company that we are representing you in your car accident claim. We may also notify your car insurance company and possibly others. These are the first of many steps that will we be taken on your car accident case.
It is our policy to keep you informed of the status and progress of your case. So you will hear and receive documents from us as your car crash case moves forward. Of course, if you have any questions as your car wreck case proceeds just pick up the phone and call us. We are there for you.
