Dewayne Hopson is an attorney in Clarksdale, MS. This article is for informational purposes only and by reading this article you acknowledge this general information should not be construed as legal advice.
The Personal Injury Consultation
What you should bring when you meet with a lawyer?
Here are five things you should bring to your initial consultation what a lawyer about your injury claim to help speed your claim up and receive better advice from you lawyer regarding your claim.
What to speed the process up by at least a month? The claim process is really slow and any extra items can help speed things along. These suggested documents are particularly related to the investigation phase of the claim. A good lawyer will still conduct their own individual investigation, but these items will save at least month worth of time on your claim process. A personal injury claim usually take at a minimum 4 – 6 months if everything goes smooth without litigation.
The suggested items we recommend you should bring to your consultation are below:
Police Report or Accident Report
The police or accident report is usually giving to each party after an accident and it’s usually for free. It is the main document used by insurance companies and lawyers to learn about key facts in the case. Just bringing the accident report to the consultation will be not only help the attorney process your claim quick, it will help him or her give you better advice in your initial consultation. If you can’t bring anything else to the consultation, make sure that you bring the police report.
Pictures
Pictures of your injuries, the car, the accident scene, the area where you fell, and anything else you can think of will be very helpful for your claim because sometimes after you hire a lawyer it may be too late to collect pictures of what happen. Also, if the other side has pictures they will most likely not let give you those pictures unless you file a lawsuit. Having your own pictures will help your claim.
Written Summary of Facts
The attorney will most likely ask for your written summary of facts during the initial consultation. Even though there are facts listed in the accident report, providing your own summary of the facts may bring to light other facts that can be relevant to the accident that is not in the police report. This will also help make your consultation go smother.
Medical Bills
You may not be able to collect all of your bills and bring them to the consultation, but if you can it will be very smart to do so. Bringing your bills will help your attorney estimate the value of your claim. Bringing them will also cut down the time it will take the attorney to collect all of your bills and records which can take a while because of slow healthcare provider’s records administrator. Furthermore, it will save you in expenses after your claim has settled as most law firms pass records fees to the client.
Your Health Insurance Information
It is important to bring your help insurance information (Medicaid cards, Medicare cards, Chip cards, work insurance cards, etc.) to your consultation so that your attorney can start the subrogation process ahead of time. This will give him or her a jump start determining if there will be any medical liens attached to your claim. This will not only speed up your claims process, it will speed up the time that it would take for you to get your settlement check
Don’t get me wrong, most law firms will (and should) get this information on their own but if you bring it into the consultation on hand, it will allow your lawyer to get the meat of your claim.
At Hopson Law Group we represent clients who are having a tough time dealing with insurance companies. We can help you get your maximum settlement. You can reach us at 662-624-4100 to set up an appointment for a free consultation to get help with your insurance claim or uninsured motorist claim!