“How Soon Will My Injury Lawyer File My Injury Case?”

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For Workers Comp Cases

In a workers comp case, most lawyers that I know file the case immediately. I certainly do it the minute somebody hires me. I would say about a third of the people who hire me for a workers comp case hire me right after the accident which I love. Because it allows me to help them and manage their case to make a strong case as possible. I would say two-thirds of my case is, people hire me after things are already starting to go wrong or after the company is already starting to work them over a little bit and kind of paint them into a corner to make their case weak or have no value or a really low value.

Now, I can usually fix that and help the case value. But I'd way rather be involved early on in the case. Whether somebody hires me early on right after a work injury or later, I can usually do things to help them. But either way, the minute they hire me, I file their case at the commission. Now why do I do that? Well I'll tell you why.

Wont Cost A Dime To File A Case

There is no benefit to waiting in workers comp. It is free to file a case at the commission. So you hire me, I can go over there, and it does not cost me a dime to file the case. Now there may be like electronic filing fees with the internet stuff that I subscribe to, but my point is it's free to file a work injury case. And you can't get any help or relief in a workers comp case unless you're in front of a judge or an arbitrator at the commission.

Let's say somebody calls me with a work injury case and they were getting paid while they were off work with the doctor's note. And then they stop paying them and nobody will tell the injured person why. And they're like "to hell with it I gotta hire Desalvo to sort this out for me". What I do in that situation is, I immediately pick up the phone, I call the adjuster, I call anyone I can get my hands on, but at the end of the day, the threat behind the phone calls is what the judge can do to them. They don't care if I'm mad at them because I can't do anything to them but a judge can.

Judge Assess Penalties

The Judge can assess penalties, the lawyers for that insurance company can come into court over at the commission and the judge can be like "hey this was BS what are you guys doing?". Lawyers are like anybody else. They want to have a good reputation, they want to be well regarded, especially in front of judges. That's why it's free and it gives teeth to what we do when we're trying to help you after work injury.

For Third Party Cases

So what about third party cases like car crashes, fall downs, dog bites, bar fights, nursing home abuse, and medical malpractice, injury cases like that, the ones that are over at the courthouse. Well in all of those cases there's a benefit to us trying to settle the case first. Now don't get me wrong, I know attorneys who, the minute they get a case in their office, they immediately file a lawsuit. I often think that that's a mistake and I'll tell you why.

As soon as an attorney files a lawsuit, the case goes from being completely managed at the insurance company with staff lawyers and insurance adjusters. It gets assigned out to litigation attorneys. And usually litigation attorneys work on an hourly basis. Now some firms work substandard insurance companies higher defense firms on a flat fee basis. So they pay them a couple of thousand dollars per case and then an extra 800 or a thousand dollars if the case goes to trial. But the standard in Insurance defense work is the defense lawyer gets paid by the hour.

Two Things Defense Attorneys Think

I always look at Marcus Aurelius, the guy who said "kui bono" which is Latin for "who benefits". You look at what's going on in this situation. The defense attorney has two things in his or her head. One, they're like "well I can't give the insurance company good advice about whether we should settle or what we should offer without me doing some work and discovering some information". That's number one.

And number two, defense firms are businesses too and they want to make money. They do an analysis and they're like "okay our average case from this Source gets us seven thousand dollars, our average Source from these guys gets us twelve thousand, well we want more of that twelve thousand dollar work". So the attorney responsible for bringing in that insurance business into the law firm wants all of his cases to bill a lot of money.

A Profit Motive

What happens if a case comes into the office and in a week the attorney settles the case for you? Well he didn't get to bill anything. Did he Bill 500 bucks his defense law firms making 500 bucks? Where if he does a full workup on the case, his firm might get five or ten Grand or 15 grand. So there's a profit motive as soon as the case gets referred out of the insurance company.

That's why in my office I double diary filing deadlines and I look at them multiple times a week. But I always work up a case and try and settle a case before filing a lawsuit. While in workers comp cases I file cases immediately. In third party cases, unless we're really close to the deadline or something like that, or unless there's a compelling reason why we need to file early, like the identity of a defendant is unknown or something of that nature or the person who got injured needs to get to court right away under those circumstances. I'll file a lawsuit right away, but it's usually to your benefit to have me try to settle your case before filing a lawsuit.

Case Costs And Attorney Fees

That's because in third party cases, I have a split fee. So I actually charge less attorneys fees if I can settle your case and more if I have to file a lawsuit. Because of the amount of work my office has to do if I file a lawsuit, it goes through the roof once we file a lawsuit. And there are things called case costs. I made an article explaining the difference between attorneys fees and case costs.

But the Reader's Digest version of that is that, case costs are what are the actual costs that an attorney advances on your behalf. Like buying a police report, paying for copies of your medical records, advancing the cost of filing the lawsuit, advancing the cost of having the sheriff serve the defendants, paying the court reporters, stuff like that. That is all stuff that the lawyer advances out of his pocket.

Attorneys fees are what the lawyer gets paid for his or her time working on your case. It's usually a contingency fee. Meaning the lawyer doesn't get paid till the end of your case.  So my point is, both the case costs go way up after we file a lawsuit and the attorney's fees go up after we file a lawsuit.

Prefer Not To Go To Court

The third and most important reason frankly is, most of my clients would prefer not to go to court. Most of my clients would prefer a fair reasonable settlement in a reasonably quick amount of time rather than going to court. Because the other thing is with the lockdowns and everything, if you go to court, you're going to be in court for a while, that's just the way it is. So that's sort of the answer to the question.

In workers comp, we file immediately. In third party cases that are at the regular courthouse, we don't file them right away for real good reason because it's better for you. We can settle them way faster if we don't file them right away and there's less hassle for you and it's less money out of your settlement for case costs and attorneys fees.

I think that information will be valuable for you, good information for you to know and I hope that you agree.