Most soft tissue injury cases are pretty straightforward.

1. Your client gets hit by another driver.

2. Indications are that the other driver is at fault.

3. Your client treats, usually with a chiropractor.

4. Defense insurance company accepts liability.

5. Your client finishes treating.

6. You prepare a demand letter and send that demand letter to the defendant insurance company.

7. The case is negotiated and settled.

There are important nuances in each of these steps that are very important to analyze. Let’s take a deeper dive into each of these steps so that you can best assess the value of the case and maximize the recovery of the case.

Handling a personal injury case pre-litigation has its challenges, but it is a great way to increase the cashflow to your business and gain more happy clients.

The quickest simplest way to ensure you get paid your referral fee is to get it in writing. California Rule of Professional Conduct 1.5.1 requires all referral fees to be in writing and that the referral fee must not affect the client’s recovery. The agreement must be signed by the client as well. A change from the old rule is that now the fee agreement must be disclosed to the client and executed at or near the time the attorneys enter into the agreement to divide the fee. The old rule (prior to November 1, 2018) only requires the agreement to be disclosed prior to the disbursement of the fees.

Lots of attorneys think that if they go to trial and get a huge verdict, they will all of a sudden become inundated with new clients and amazing cases to work on. There is nothing further from the truth. The best method for getting new cases revolves around a more direct relationship building approach.

Of course, your success in trial or in your practice, is extremely important. After all, no one wants to refer cases to someone who doesn’t have experience winning or serving their clients in an exceptional manner. Your success as a lawyer serves as the proof needed to convince both clients and other attorneys that you are a trust-worthy person for them to send clients to. That is pretty much all it does. It isn’t going to cause people to come rushing to you with cases.

You need to build credibility through experience and success but then you need to leverage that to get more referrals for your firm. You need to focus your time and energy on building a consistent stream of cases coming your way, through attorney referrals.

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:

1. 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.

   2. You can try to work the case up for settlement (pre-litigation) and keep the entire fee without referring the case out.

   3. 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.)

The hugely important shift you need to make is seeing yourself as a “Legal Expert”. This simple shift will open you up to a world of opportunity. Seek to become THE go-to attorney in your community. Teach people that they should come to you any time they have a legal need.

Criminal defense attorneys have quickly realized they could add more than six-figures a year to their practice by literally doing nothing more than sending a client our way. They have continued to send referrals to us and they each now have a passive source of income that keeps them safe and secure, even in a pandemic.