How To Spot The Red Flags When Seeking A High Quality Personal Injury Attorney

There’s no place to hide from attorney advertising.  You can’t miss them when you’re driving down a billboard lined highway, and again when you get home on your computer. You might even see attorney representatives at the scene of your accident or at the hospital, encouraging you to go to their “therapy place.” Queens, Bronx, Staten Island, Manhattan and Brooklyn car accident attorneys make all kinds of promises, but how do you know which claims to believe? This article will show you how to spot “the red flags” that can reveal that your attorney is not being honest and transparent.

The “Therapy Place” Guy

Some unscrupulous lawyers collude with unethical medical practitioners to hawk services at the scene of accidents. They use technology that allows them to listen to police frequencies and respond when they are called to the scene of an accident. They are also known to literally chase ambulances to hospitals. They approach their mark with cards for a “therapy place,” sometimes promising that they will receive cash for going to a facility. Think about it – this guy is not a doctor or any type of medical practitioner and he’s decided that you require physical therapy for injuries that have not even been diagnosed yet, that might even just go away in a few days. If you are naive enough to go to the facility, you may be asked to sign papers for “their lawyer,” or just given a stack of papers to sign with no explanation. These facilities are often “mills,” where you are quickly shuttled between many different treatment modalities so that they can bill the insurance company for each service. The attorneys, who you often never have a chance to meet or even speak to, are not the best you’re going to find in your community. They are known for demanding that you stay out of work or have surgery as a condition of continued representation, even if you are feeling fine. Most car and truck accident lawyers in NYC work on a contingency fee, so you don’t have to pay anything until they collect money for you, so why not choose one with an excellent reputation that treats you with respect?

Too Good To Be True Promises

Anybody that’s been seriously injured in an accident wants to know the answer to the following questions:

1. When will I get better?
2. Will I ever fully recover?
3. How much money can I expect to recover in compensation?

Logic dictates that none of these questions can be answered with any certainty in the days and weeks following an accident. How can an attorney, or even a doctor, have any idea how long an injury will take to resolve without the results of diagnostic testing and without knowing how well the injuries might respond to therapy. It is even more ridiculous to predict whether an injury will be permanent. It follows that it’s not possible to predict how much compensation can be collected for these very same reasons. Another reason it’s not possible to predict the amount of compensation is that research usually needs to be to determine the applicable policy limits, if it turns out that there is only $25,000 worth of insurance coverage, that will be all that it will be possible to collect. There also might be evidence that changes the percentages of fault, reducing the amount of money that can be collected. That’s why you should probably get up off your chair and walk out the door (without signing papers or after asking for your signed papers to be returned) if a Queens, Bronx, Manhattan, Staten Island or Brooklyn car accident attorney claims he will collect a large amount of money for your case at it’s early stages, using numbers like “a million dollars” or “hundreds of thousands of dollars.” A sincere and ethical car or truck accident lawyer in NYC will not “give you a number” for your case in it’s early stages, no matter how hard you press.

For over 60 years, Wittenstein & Wittenstein has been representing New Yorkers seeking high quality legal representation for Traffic Accidents, Amusement Park Accidents, Aviation Accidents, Personal injury, Discrimination, Bicycle Accidents, Premises Liability, Building Collapse Accidents, Construction Accidents, Bus Accidents, and Product Liability cases. Our talented attorneys renowned as the most transparent and result oriented Queens, Bronx, Manhattan, Staten Island and Brooklyn Car Accident Attorneys. We are proud to have a long line of happy clients who motivate us to do better every day.

If you need consultation in any area of legal practice, call us at 718-261-8114 or drop us an email at law@wittenstein.com. We will be glad to help.