A personal injury lawyer can help people who experience accidents and suffer an injury. A lawyer can help you receive financial compensation for your medical treatment, reimbursement for lost wages, and even the psychological trauma you experienced.
What does your injury lawyer do? Here are the more important things they do for you.
Inform You of Your Rights
In New Orleans, Louisiana, a personal injury lawyer can explain to you how your accidental injury claim is processed and how various accompanying legal concerns could influence your rights. Laws differ from state to state with their statutes of limitations and rules of comparative negligence, and they could affect your case in various ways.
The statute of limitations enforces certain time limits in the filing of lawsuits, while the rules of comparative negligence tell you if you can sue or if you are to blame partially for the accident, and so how much you can recover.
Offer Advice
At the outset, your personal injury lawyer will advise you to not to make any statement to the insurance company of the other driver. If you do so, the company will seek ways to deny you any liability. Your lawyer will also ask you to go for a medical treatment that will document all your injuries during the accident.
Represent You in Court
Cases of personal injuries don’t usually end up in a trial, as most of them are settled before the filing of a lawsuit. On the other hand, if the other driver’s insurance company refutes your claim, then there is every possibility for you to go through a trial to get compensation. A trial can be complicated, and your lawyer could represent you in court to present the vital proof supporting your claim.
Your lawyer can enter into informal negotiations with the other driver’s insurance company either before or after the case is filed. Your lawyer can help with informal negotiations with the insurance company before or after your case goes to the court.
They can process the litigation if the settlement offered by the insurance company is unsatisfactory. In the event of your own insurance company gets involved in the case, your lawyer can go for arbitration. This means taking your case to a neutral arbitrator who will make a decision binding to both sides.
In case of a trial, personal injury law firms send their investigators to document the scene of your accident fully, and interview witnesses. In this way, they form theories as to how the accident happened. Such investigators can be professionals or sometimes retired police officers. Your lawyer might even call in experts who can reconstruct accidents if necessary, to win the case.
Other things a personal injury lawyer can do are to connect clients with those who provide medical services who are experienced in treating accident victims. The medical provider can recommend you to an appropriate specialist and also precisely assess the long-term effect of your injuries, like the loss in earning ability if the accident has made you disabled. Your lawyer can consult an economist or actuary to help him estimate the lifetime effect of your accident.
So whatever is the outcome of your accident, look for a personal injury lawyer who could do all of these for you and move your cases forward with efficiency.