Frequently Asked Questions About Personal Injury Cases (For Non-PI Lawyers)
Why Every Lawyer Should Be Marketing For Personal Injury Cases: Part 3
This is part of three in a 5-part series entitled, Why Every Lawyer Should Be Marketing For Personal Injury Cases.
Many lawyers who have referred us cases to Case Barnett Law have been paid 6-figure referral fees.
In part one of this series, How Any Lawyer in California Can Add a Passive Stream of Income to Their Existing Law Firm , we discussed how attorneys in all practice areas can add passive income to their practices through attorney referral fees. Each state has its own rules surrounding referral fees so make sure you understand what is legal in your jurisdiction. We operate a law firm in California, where referral fees are allowed if you follow the code of professional conduct.
In part two, How To Leverage Your Existing Contact List to Increase Your Income, we covered how you can use your existing personal relationships to generate more cases, both within your practice area and in other areas so you can build relationships with other attorneys are earn referral fees.
If you have implemented some of the marketing strategies we covered and have landed a potential personal injury client, congratulations! You have just opened the door to a whole new practice and way of doing business. With more revenue you can grow your firm and serve even more people in you community.
When you become the “go-to legal expert” in your community, you will be able to help potential clients connect with your referral partners.
In part two we briefly touched on the 3 key things you need in order to have a strong personal injury case. Here is a quick review of the big things you should ask your potential client about before signing them up: damages, liability, and collectability.
The damages analysis looks at the injuries of the potential plaintiff. The more life altering the injury, the greater the potential recovery. Will someone need care for the rest of their lives? Are there future surgeries required? While not a damages category per se, the offensiveness of the defendant’s conduct also plays a role in case value.
The liability analysis consists of looking at what the defendant’s negligence was and was that negligence the proximate cause of Plaintiff’s injuries.
Finally, collectability looks at the likelihood that there will be money to recover. Is there a commercial defendant (increasing the likelihood that there is a larger commercial insurance policy in place)? Does defendant appear to be someone who would carry a larger insurance policy or an umbrella policy?
You Landed a Personal Injury Case, Now What?
So…you have positioned yourself as the expert in all things legal in your community. Because of this, you are the go-to resource when people have a legal issue and they need help. A potential personal injury case has crossed your desk, even though you aren’t a personal injury attorney. You know that there are three ways you can handle this situation:
You can send the client to a colleague you know and trust who is an expert in accident cases. You will each follow the rules of professional conduct in your state and you will collect referral fees when the case resolves.
You can try to work the case up for settlement (pre-litigation) and keep the entire fee without referring the case out.
You can tell the client you don’t do personal injury and refer them to the state bar hotline or the internet. (This is an option you are too smart to do because you know you are passing up on a referral fee.)
For the sake of this blog post, we are going to focus on number 1, sending the case out to a referral partner so you can collect referral fees. Part five of this series will cover what to do if you want to learn how to work a case up for settlement and try to handle it on your own, therefore keeping the entire fee instead of only getting a referral fee.
Questions Criminal Defense Attorneys Always Ask Us About Personal Injury Cases
We have compiled a list of the most frequently asked questions criminal defense attorneys have when they begin to market for personal injury cases or when they decide they want to learn how to handle these types of cases on their own.
What Do I Tell a Client Who Calls Me With Personal Injury Questions?
We are working on creating a cheat sheet full of all the most common questions potential personal injury clients will ask you. They are always the same and once you go through them a few times, you will be an expert at healing accident clients. If you have a referral relationship set up with a personal injury attorney you can either direct your client to that attorney or you can set up a 3-way Zoom call or in person meeting.
We think that it is only beneficial to educate yourself on the basics of personal injury. This is in alignment with you being the go to legal resource in your community. You should try to learn enough to answer questions any potential client has. This will build your relationship with them and you will be helping them with their legal issue, even if it is just helping them sort through the initial questions they have or helping them find a trustworthy personal injury attorney.
Should I Try to Settle the Case Myself or Send It Straight to a Personal Injury Lawyer?
If you have no interest in learning personal injury, we suggest sending the potential client directly to your referral partner. This is what most of the criminal defense attorneys do that we work with. They get a call from someone hurt in an accident and we have taught them how to vet cases. If they think there is decent potential (damages, liability and collectibility) they will directly refer the case to us. They either shoot us a text or email letting us know that client is coming our way or, sometimes, we just get the call from the client.
It’s important to note that our referral partners have worked with us for years and trust us. They know we will keep them updated and take care of any referral they send our way (even if we don't take the case on). They get checks from us without having to worry about us going radio silent and them and they know that the systems and procedures we use at our firm ensure that cases are closed as quickly as possible. In other words, they know they will get paid their referral fees in a reasonable amount of time and that they don’t have anything to worry about when they send a client our way. Any attorney you refer cases to should provide you with a sense of trust and security. If you don’t feel that they are going to be transparent or take care of your referred client, find someone else to do business with.
If you are interested in learning how to work up a personal injury case so that you can keep the entire fee…stay tuned. We will go over this in depth in part five of this blog series and will be teaching you exactly how we set up our cases for success.
What About Trial? Is Trying a Civil Case Different Than a Criminal Case?
Yes and No. If you know how to do a trial, you are ahead of 99% of attorneys. There are differences in how a civil case versus a criminal case are put on but don’t let that deter you from learning how to try a personal injury case. My background was in criminal defense. How did I learn how to do a civil trial? I just did one. I’m not sure I recommend that route for everyone but that’s why we are going to be creating a webinar on how criminal defense attorneys can quickly learn how to put on a civil case.
The biggest difference between civil and criminal trials is jury selection. The lens through which jurors view their roles in the two types of cases is very different. Jurors in a criminal case see their job as the avenging angel for victims. They have seen Law and Order and they know what criminal justice is. Civil trials are different in that respect. The visceral response of most jurors is very different in a civil case. Jurors need to be taught more about the importance of their role in the civil justice system. They need to be taught why these cases matter to the litigants, and why these cases matter to the public as a whole.
Jury selection becomes even more important in civil cases because of the wide disparity between people’s views of the civil justice system and money. What a dollar means to juror number 1 may be very different from juror number 2 and even more different from juror number 3. “Fair compensation” seems to be a relative term.
The evidence code is at times applied slightly differently in civil cases than criminal cases. With greater constitutional implications in criminal cases, the evidence code tends to be more tightly enforced than in civil cases with evidence more likely to be excluded that is unreliable.
Is Written Discovery a Total Nightmare?
Yes. Sorry, it just is. The good thing, is that you don’t have to be an expert in all areas. If you just want to handle cases in pre-litigation to see if you can settle them before you refer them out, you won’t need to learn discovery. If you want to learn how to handle the case through trial you will have to learn discovery. Don’t forget though, you can hire someone to help you with discovery. A basic understanding of the process is important but if you understand trial (which you do if you are criminal defense attorney), you will be fine.
The discovery objections can be a substantial hurdle. There are excellent articles like this one from The Advocate. Be aware of the discovery deadlines and how long you have to file a motion to compel. You must take reasonable steps to resolve the discovery disputes informally with defense counsel through the meet and confer process. Many defense attorney’s make a living being obstructive and will make you jump over every hurdle and through every hoop before they give you the good stuff. To truly go through the discovery process is beyond the scope of this article, but there are many resources to help you through this process like Civil Procedure Before Trial (The Rutter Group Civil Practice Guide).
How Do You Afford to Pay All Those Costs on Cases?
This is a huge part of deciding to take on a personal injury matter. PI cases are 100% contingency and you will be fronting the costs on the case if you decide to handle it on your own. When we get cases referred to us we handle 100% of the costs and the referring attorney literally has to do nothing other than collect their referral fees at the end of the case.
There are typically two ways personal injury firms fund cases. One is that the firm pays costs from their operating accounts. If they lose a case, they never recover the costs. This can be tricky because you can have hundreds of thousands of dollars out on costs at any given time. If you can afford to do it this way, it’s the best way because you won’t pay interest or have to come out of pocket if you ever get defensed on a case.
The second way lawyers fund cases is through lines of credit or finance companies that specifically service plaintiffs personal injury firms. These lines of credit are not easy to get if you aren’t an established business and they have caps to how much money you can access. Additionally, you will have to pay interest and origination fees each month which can add up to thousands of dollars each month. If you lose a case you will have to come up with the amount of costs for that case as well as paying any interest in fees. Many of these companies will also attach liens to your personal property in the event you default on repaying your loans.
To simplify what it looks like; in scenario A you pay costs from your operating account as you work the case up. You lose the case and are out the 60k you paid in costs. The money was already spent and, while it stings to not recoup the money, it was already out of your account. In scenario B you funded the case through a finance company and you lose. You have to come up with 60k to pay the finance company back. For some reason this just feels much more painful than the first option. This can snowball and leave you playing catch up. This is one of the ways Tom Girardi, of Giardi Keese, got in so much trouble with money.
We will cover this more in part 5 but for now just know that if you decide to fund a personal injury case there are many things you will need to consider. Some cases settle for a large amount of money with little costs paid. Some settle for decent money with high costs paid. Learning about hiring experts and when to spend money (and when not to spend money) is a delicate balancing act and takes quite some time to master.
Other blog posts in this series:
Part One: How Any Lawyer in California Can Add a Passive Stream of Income to Their Existing Law Firm
Part Two: How to Leverage Your Existing Contact List to Increase Your Income
Part Four: How to Ensure You Receive Your Referral Fee After You Send a Case to Another Law Firm
Part Five: How to Settle a Personal Injury Case in Pre-Litigation
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Disclaimer: When collecting or paying referral fees, be sure to follow the Rules of Professional Conduct for your state. This blog is made available by the legal consulting firm, Law Prophet, LLC, for educational purposes. It provides general information and a general understanding of the law and business practices, but does not provide specific legal advice. By using this site, commenting on posts, or sending inquiries through the site or contact email, you confirm that there is no attorney-client or business relationship between you and the Law Prophet blog publisher. The blog should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction.This blog is informational in nature and is not a substitute for legal research or a consultation on specific matters pertaining to you or your clients. Due to the dynamic nature of legal doctrines, what might be accurate one day may be inaccurate the next. As such, the contents of this blog must not be relied upon as a basis for arguments to a court or for your advice to clients and other attorneys without, again, further research or a consultation with a professional.