Do I Really Need An Attorney?
Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening depending on where you are. I hope you are doing well and hopefully enjoying some beautiful fall weather.
I get asked this question not infrequently “do I really need an attorney or can’t I just handle this myself?” Truth be told, the vast majority of the times you do need an attorney. Why? Because the insurance companies, even your own, have very little if any interest in helping you. Let me explain by example.
Our client was injured in a crash. The at fault party’s insurance paid, as they should have given the facts, the full amount of its insured’s policy limits. That amount wasn’t enough to cover all of the loses our client had sustained. Fortunately, she had read my prior blog posts on the importance of UM/UIM coverage and had said coverage. We did demand for her policy limits of $25,000. Her insurance company offered $2,500. This was an embarrassingly low offer and showed the insurance company wasn’t taking the claim seriously. I filed a lawsuit on my client’s behalf against her insurance company. They immediately offered the full $25,000.
Has our client tried to navigate this on her own, I am not certain her insurance company would have ever offered the $2,500. I am positive it would never have done the right thing on its own and paid the full policy limits. It is only because we filed suit (and I am also certain not all lawyers would have) that the insurance company “did the right thing.”
So, do you always need a lawyer? My answer is probably not always. If you have just a property damage claim you more than likely don’t need one. Or, if you aren’t injured you certainly don’t need one. But, if you are injured, don’t believe that any insurance company or big corporation is going to treat you fairly. It, sadly, isn’t in their nature. And that is why I am here, at my office at 6:30 am on a Saturday trying to make sure those insurance companies and big corporations face responsibility because they won’t take responsibility on their own.