When you sit down with a personal injury attorney, you'll likely want to have a general idea of what influences your chances of successfully pursuing a claim. Although no single factor can magically push a case to success, there are a few things you and your personal injury lawyer may be able to do to improve your odds. Look at the following factors that often come into play when advancing a claim.
1. Reports
The anchor for virtually every injury claim is what an attorney can assemble in terms of reports. Police reports are often filed from the scenes of incidents. Doctors supply reports in the emergency room, after surgery, and during therapy. Incident reports are usually put together by businesses where events like slip-and-fall accidents occur.
Piecing the reports together allows a personal injury lawyer to explain what happened and why. Likewise, supplying reports created by respected professionals like cops, EMTs, nurses, and doctors provides a degree of authority to a case.
2. Insurance Adjusters
Many claims are filed with insurance companies, and one of the big players in those types of cases is the insurance adjuster. This is a party hired by the insurance carrier to evaluate the validity of the claim. An adjuster may or may not be an independent professional, but their focus is supposed to be solely on determining whether a claim is valid. If it is, they then move on to determining what sort of settlement is appropriate.
Adjusters look at a slew of factors. In addition to the supporting materials supplied by your personal injury attorney, they will also look at industry data to determine what settlement offer should be made if one is going to be pursued.
3. Interviews
Witness interviews from the scene of an incident may be valuable, too. This is especially the case if there aren't sources of information like video or if such sources require context. It also can be helpful to piece together what the incident looked like from multiple angles.
4. Expert Opinions
Some claims require the perspectives of experts. If a personal injury attorney is trying to explain what the safety standards are for a particular business, for example, it may be wise to get analysis from an expert witness who engineers safety solutions.
5. Lawsuit
While a settlement is always the goal, the threat of a lawsuit lays at the back of every injury claim. Lawsuits open defendants up to the discovery process, where all kinds of information can come out. There is also the risk that a trial judgment may minimize the settlement offer.
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