I’m sure clients often wonder, ‘Can I Settle car accident claim without lawyer? If I get a lawyer, then I will have to pay him one third of my settlement. If I settle the case myself then I get the whole amount. Even If I get less than the lawyer would get me I still clear more because I do not have to pay him his one third.’ While this seems like a reasonable conclusion, the purpose of this article is to point out the fallacy and reasoning that leads a person to try and settle their case without an attorney.
Settle car accident claim without lawyer? When you hire an attorney to represent yourself or a family member in an auto accident claim, that particular attorney hopefully has handled thousands of similar claims. Based upon that experience your attorney should know how to put a proper value on your claim. Attorneys learn how to evaluate claims by previously dealing with the same insurance companies and insurance adjusters to see what value they put on the claim. They can develop a rapport with the claims office. The claims office will develop a familiarity with the lawyer and know his strengths and weaknesses.
If the lawyer has tried cases against them before, they will be aware of his ability to obtain from juries more than the insurance company wants to pay. No adjuster wants to be embarrassed when a jury awards more than the case could have been settled for. Lawyer can learn the value of the claim by actually trying cases. There is no better way to find out the real value of a case than actually trying a case in front of a judge or jury. The more experience the lawyer has, the more different situations he is handled, the more likely it is that he will have handled cases just like yours. These experiences enable the lawyer to determine what the high and low figures are that an insurance, is willing to offer in a case just like yours.
Settle car accident claim without lawyer? If an injured party tries to handle the case on their own, this is probably the only case they’ve ever had, or if they’ve had one or two other cases that is not a sufficient sample in which to evaluate a claim. There are many factors that go in the value of the claim. Unless you handle thousands of claims, a person would not be aware of all the nuances that go into evaluating the claim.
Settle car accident claim without lawyer? When dealing with the insurance company without a lawyer, the insurance adjuster knows you don’t have a lawyer obviously. They also believe you are not likely to obtain a lawyer. The adjuster knows that you don’t know how to evaluate the claim and would likely be willing to accept less than full value for the case. Because claimant does not have a lawyer, the insurance adjuster is more likely than not they’re going to deduct off the top one third from their offer knowing that you don’t have a lawyer in figuring that you’ll most likely take just about anything.
Even if assure them you will not want to take just anything, the insurance company knows that you cannot file suit in the case on your own and that you have to get an attorney to file suit. If you’re dealing with them directly, the insurance adjuster will get the impression that you’re not the type of person who is willing to pay to have an attorney and therefore probably offer you a low ball settlement. The only hammer that a claimant has against an insurance company in an automobile accident claim is the threat that if the offer is not sufficient, the claimant will not take the offer and that suit will be filed and the value of the case will be left up to a judge or jury. Insurance committees don’t like judges and juries placing values on a case because they then lose control over how much money is paid. An insurance company has an idea of what the usual high and low value of the case is, but once the case goes to trial anything can happen.
A jury can award 10 times the actual value of the case or a jury can award nothing. Insurance companies don’t like to deal with those possibilities and are more interested in framing a settlement that’s within the parameters they’ve set. Nothing is more embarrassing to an insurance adjuster than having made a low ball offer to a claimant and then having the case go to a jury and having the jury award four times what the case could of settled, based on the demands of were made by the lawyer at the time of settlement discussions took place.
If you do not have a lawyer, then the insurance company knows that you will likely not be filing suit and that they can basically settle the case for whatever they want as you have no other way to make them pay any more.
Settle car accident claim without lawyer? The insurance company adjusters have special training on how to deal with people who are unrepresented by an attorney. The insurance adjuster that you deal with more likely than not is a person specially pick to work with people who are unrepresented and who knows how to say the right things to that type of person that does not hire an attorney so that they can get this case settled without the person ever considering getting a lawyer
Settle car accident claim without lawyer? The next thing that insurance companies fear is that an unrepresented claimant will get an attorney. If the adjuster is unable to settle the case with the person who does not have a lawyer, then the adjuster knows that person may go to an attorney and then the value of the case will be much greater than it was when they were dealing directly with the claimant. If you intend on settling your case without getting an attorney you lose this leverage.
Settle car accident claim without lawyer? Insurance companies often try and settle cases with claimants directly immediately because a lawyer knows how to build the value into a case, whereas the client does not. They do this because they know that if an attorney gets involved the value of the case, will increase because a lawyer knows how to build the value of the case whereas the unrepresented client does not. You would not build your own house so why do you assume you know how to build a case.
Settle car accident claim without lawyer? In order to get a settlement offer from the insurance company, it is necessary that a person is actually injured in the accident. However, being injured alone is not enough to actually get more than a nominal amount of money from an insurance company. In order to get the actual value of the case, it is necessary that you go to a qualified doctor who renders reports on a timely basis, who sends the bills the insurance company requires, who documents the treatment that you have and who is willing to treat you in a timely basis.
A good lawyer will be able to find a doctor who will cooperate in your case. Without an attorney is often difficult to find doctors who want to do accident work because most doctors don’t want to get involved in litigation. Even if the doctors in willing to get involved most of the doctors don’t know how to write reports and how to submit reports on a timely basis and how to put bills in the proper format that the insurance company will accept.
Settle car accident claim without lawyer? Even if you have the appropriate Dr. the insurance company will attempt to argue that the accident somehow was your totally or partially your fault. Insurance companies are notorious for doing this in order to try and convince you that your case is either worth nothing or worth very little. Unless your lawyer explains the law to the insurance adjuster and why the laws on your side, the insurance company will try and use the law against you.
Settle car accident claim without lawyer? The art of negotiation is truly an art and is perfected by having done it over a long period of time in a large amount of cases. If the only time you’ve ever negotiated a case is the case that you presently have, then you surely have not perfected the art of negotiating a personal injury claim and because of that you are very likely to get a very low settlement offer. Insurance adjusters negotiate claims every day and because of that have developed their own expertise in negotiating claim. If your negotiating with an experienced insurance adjuster than there is a high probability that they will be able to take advantage of you.
The insurance company will tell you things, and you will not know whether in fact the assertions that they make are true or not because you have no experience in dealing in this particular situation. If I came to your job and told you how to do your job and I knew nothing about your job you would just sit there and laugh. That is the same thing the insurance adjusters are doing when you call to try and settle your case. They know you know nothing about their job and based upon that they are going to do whatever they can to take advantage of you because they know there’s nothing you can do about it because you do not have the ability to either hire an attorney or file suit in your case.
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