The obvious question that might come up is then: should I get an attorney?
By Carolina Schottland, Personal Injury Attorney
It’s a good idea for you to at least consult with an attorney though your case might not be one an attorney would take depending on the amount of your injuries or damages. We generally consider your injuries, what we call damages, there are also other damages such as normal life, pain and suffering and these are the things that we look at as to the value of your case.
Now it’s impossible for us to predict the exact value of a case when we first discuss it but we can generally give you an idea of what an insurance company might do based on your bills and other damages that you suffer.
So it is advisable for you to discuss your particular incident with an attorney to get an idea of whether it is something that you might want to handle yourself or it is something that an attorney would be glad to take on for you.
I always tell people that this is something that they can likely do themselves but I also caution them of certain risks such as being able to understand all of the medical treatment and making certain that all of the medical providers are being paid when the final settlement is done.
Time and time again I come across people that previously resolved cases on their own and it turns out that not all medical treatment was paid for when the insurance company said they would have paid all of the medical bills. This is a very important aspect of a case and that’s one of the aspects that I believe really makes a difference by obtaining an attorney.
When you obtain my office to represent you in a car accident, we make certain that we understand all the medical treatment that you have received and we order bills according to the information that you have provided for us so that we can get a complete picture of everybody that you need to repay or everybody that we need to make certain has been paid. And this is one of the most overwhelming aspects of any injury case.
Most people don’t understand that when they go to the hospital, it’s not just the hospital bill that you will receive. For example if you go to the emergency room, you’re not just receiving treatment from the emergency room in the hospital that you go to.
You are also going to receive bills from the physician group that assisted you and potentially from radiology if you had diagnostic testing and potentially even a cardiology group or a pathology group. So whereas you think you go to the hospital and you will get one bill, you will more than likely get between 3 to 6 bills from that one emergency room visit.
It is important for you to understand that each of those individuals need to get repaid in one manner or another so even though you might give your insurance information to the hospital, it’s not necessarily a given that all of the other treatment providers will have the same exact information.
So that’s where it becomes overwhelming, is knowing exactly who your treatment providers are, making certain that you know all the bills relevant to your treatment and that’s one of the biggest services that an attorney will provide for you, at least my office does.
The other thing that we do that is very valuable is that when we are finally in a position to settle the case, we work very hard to negotiate the amount set eventually have to be repaid because once you receive treatment either somebody has paid it and it needs to be paid back or somebody has remained unpaid and now needs to be paid.
So when we receive the settlement, part of our job is to negotiate those amounts so that we can put more money in your pocket.
Call us for your free consultation today.