Auto Insurance

Is a Car & Motorcycle Accident Attorney Worthwhile?

The adrenaline is off the scale, the heart rate is spiked, and thoughts are racing wildly in your head while you are trying to accept the fact – you have got into a car accident.

In between calling an ambulance, talking to the police, capturing pictures/videos, and collecting contacts from witnesses, one crucially important detail may skip your attention – you must protect your rights, no matter the mishap is at your or somebody else’s negligence.

Still, when your machine gets into an accident, consulting a qualified car lawyer is within your course of primary actions because a professional has both the expertise and motivation to ease this ugly situation. Well, it is, surely, your right to go without any legal support when it comes to settling the vehicle accident aftermath. But before you make, perhaps, one of the biggest decisions in your life, you should recognize that your car insurance underwriter may not take your side.

What is the hitch with insurance carriers?

Why, you ask, should your carrier turn its back on you when you get into mess, given that you always were dutiful with your premiums, and you are just a good guy never breaking traffic laws? The simple truth is that your insurer is not anyhow willing to pay you thousands (hundreds, millions, depending on the case’s seriousness) of bucks to cover your, believe us, heavy expenses.

Indeed, the firm is mad keen on retaining your money, while continuing to collect even more dollars from you, for a sheer promise of paying everything back in spades when your auto suffers. The arithmetic here is pretty simple: the more claims the company satisfies, the less it earns.

So, without a well-trained car/motor attorney to hold your hand through the whole give-me-all-my-compensation-you-sons-of-bitches process, your insurer will, much likely, devalue or even reject your claim, causing you to pay for all associated losses directly out of your wallet, which may, eventually, break your back.

Insurance companies rely on the fact that you do not completely realize or just underestimate your rights, are not fully aware of your options, or how to go up against these organizations. Indeed, the only thing you want after an event is to make it be over as soon as may be, with the least mess possible. Individuals often agree to an early settlement proposed by an insurer of the guilty party, believing in its adequacy.

Still, after going through expensive treatment (rehabilitation, both physical and psychological), having a hurt auto repaired, calculating the lost income, such people often realize that they have hurried to sign the release from all claims.

With a knowledgeable attorney, you enjoy peace of mind that your rights will be observed and your demands will be satisfied. An expert has both experience and competence to bargain with an underwriter, firmly standing up for the claimant’s rights.

Once you acknowledge this bitter truth, the idea of involving an attorney to represent your interests stops seeming meaningless. Recovering from a car accident may be a fiendishly expensive luxury. From towing the wracked auto to a service shop and receiving medical (and often psychological) treatment to losing incomes and finding a substitute for the out-of-order auto, your expenses soar following an incident, but you want to believe that they will be fairly covered.

What does a car/motor lawyer do?

Broadly speaking, such a specialist helps you receive the compensation you need and deserve to completely cover your material and mental distress. A client-centric car accident attorney will aggressively fight for your interests to ensure that the expenditures incurred by you due to a collision are paid in toto by either your insurance company or by the person guilty of that damn accident (if you deal with an uninsured motorist).

In fact, there are going to be plenty of expenses following a crash, including healthcare costs, repair of your car (if it is repairable, surely, otherwise, purchasing/renting a new one), lost wages, damage to your and third parties’ property – the list of possible expenses is not limited just to that but goes far beyond. No matter how many dollars you spend to smooth the repercussions of an accident, the ultimate objective of an attorney is to help you come away with a hefty sum to defray all your losses.  

How will a car accident lawyer work the case?

In general terms, a vehicle accident attorney will guide you through the whole process, putting forth all his/her exertions to obtain the proper compensation for your monetary wastage. A lawyer will provide their knowledge of the law and other legal niceties applicable to your very situation, giving a candid portrayal of your chances to win/lose the case.

Your car accident lawyer will take the burden of communication with the negatively predisposed insurance companies upon themselves. Huge insurers have enough resources to defend their rights and keep the received money to themselves, instead of paying it to claimants. A good car accident lawyer is well-versed in dealing with reluctant underwriters and wheedling YOUR money out of them.

The worst thing behind insurance companies is that they are very inventive when it comes to indemnifying, and they will create tons of legal obstacles to avoid an indemnity. The objective of a car/motor accident attorney is to level the playing field and bring you adequate compensation.

Here is what an attorney will generally do on your behalf to help you win the case:

  • Interacting with insurance companies. Most carriers are awfully intransigent and will never want to part with their (actually, yours) money. A genuine specialist knows how to approach lowball-prone companies. Your attorney will haunt the thresholds of the responsible insurer in a bid to make them pay fairly and timely.
  • Gathering evidence. Proving your point is quite an ordeal, especially if many days have gone after an accident. Your attorney will do lots of legwork to speak to witnesses, obtain reports from police/medical establishments, analyze lost wages, and collecting any other pieces of evidence necessary to boost your odds of winning in court. A good lawyer is very scrupulous and leaves no stone unturned to prove his client deserves way more than the pittance suggested by an insurer.
  • Building a demand letter to settle the claim. The demand letter is a vital document, highlighting the grounds for paying you exactly as much as you ask. Crafting a proper letter is challenging and requires lots of special knowledge: it must extensively outline the incident, detail your injuries, explain all your damages, contain a reasonable calculation of your expenses, and include all the records relevant to the case. Concocting a demand letter without legal advice may end up with the fact that the underwriter will offer you a minimal settlement to shake off you, yet it will hardly be enough to meet all your immediate and, most importantly, future expenses linked with a car accident.
  • Preparing documentation to file with the court. While in most cases a reputation-conscious insurance company will try to settle the matter without going to trial, sometimes a situation takes a bad turn, driving a need to resolve an issue through legal action. But with a dedicated attorney to support you, you are free from a headache to gather facts, obtain necessary papers, and build your case to go to court on your own. Even if you are a driver at-fault, a true attorney will advocate for you and do everything to help you receive justice.

How to find a good car/motor incident attorney?

  • Here are tell-tale signs of a trustworthy vehicle accident attorney:
  • Specializes exclusively in personal injury and car accident law;
  • Has made a reputation as an aggressive advocate that easily brings cases to court and wins;
  • Is well-known to deliver high verdicts and solid settlements;
  • Has been certified by The National Board of Trial Advocacy; 
  • Teaches/lectures at legal education seminars;
  • Can provide a list of his/her happy clients as references;
  • Has enough financial and staffing resources to handle your case.

Insurance companies, especially nation-wide ones are truly hostile: they know how to keep revenues high with bare-bones costs. They try to charge you with exuberantly elevated premiums, while throwing ridiculous obstacles in your way when you apply for well-deserved compensation.

Still, underwriters are familiar with attorneys who easily put cases to juries as surely as they are aware of the lawyers who never fight for their clients’ interests at court. When searching for a trusted car accident attorney, make sure that he or she is not a shrinking violet in a courtroom and unfailingly excels at personal injury and car accident cases.

Even if you consider your incident minor, you, still, should seriously consider counseling a professional. Luckily, their consultation services are free, while letting you know about your options, consequences, and odds of getting a lucrative reimbursement.

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