Author’s Words of Warning

Many people choose to handle their injury claims without an attorney. This is certainly your right. However, there are advantages to attorney representation. There are also significant risks to handling your case alone, without the advice and guidance of counsel.

Before I explain the injury claim process, I must first make it clear that a single book could never provide complete or proper legal advice for every case. Injury claims are always unique, and your rights depend on your particular injuries and circumstances. Also, as a licensed attorney, I am not allowed to provide legal representation through a broad writing or textbook. For proper legal advice that fits your unique needs and circumstances, you must speak directly with an experienced personal injury lawyer.

While I cannot write a book that acts as everyone’s lawyer, I do seek to provide helpful advice to all collision victims facing significant injury. After working for several years as an insurance adjuster and an insurance company lawyer, I realized that insurance companies commonly underpay injury claims. Their main weapon is superior knowledge. I hope, through this work, to empower accident victims and to help innocent victims gain equal bargaining power.

My law firm currently employs four licensed claims adjusters with over eighty years of collective experience handling injury claims for insurance companies. I personally also have years of experience working for insurance companies as a claims adjuster and as an insurance defense lawyer. Our insurance team worked together on this project to help you understand how the other side will look at your case.

In this chapter I reveal many of the secrets and steps involved in the injury claim process. As an attorney committed to enforcing the legal rights of accident victims, I must share the benefits of legal representation in these cases. Attorneys typically pay for themselves in serious injury cases. We also protect your compensation rights, and, through medical expertise and financial leverage, we increase settlement offers and trial verdicts. While the attorney’s fee takes a share of the end payment, if we make that payment much larger, we handle all the work, expand your legal options, and work to increase the net payment you receive for your injuries even after the attorney’s fee is paid.