When should I call a personal injury lawyer? The question can be difficult for many people. It’s easy to talk yourself out of getting help or to convince yourself a situation isn’t as bad as it really is. When you’re injured, it’s crucial that you get a personal injury lawyer to help walk you through the process. A lawyer isn’t just someone who tries a case in court. They also help you communicate with insurance companies, making sense of medical bills, and navigating your worker’s comp claim through a sometimes complex administrative process. Here’s when to call a personal injury lawyer in Florida:
1. The Injury Is Going to Last
Many injuries heal quickly. Many others can linger for months or years. They can limit your ability to work or limit your ability to enjoy life. Your #1 priority after a personal injury is to make sure you and others are safe and getting medical treatment. The second thing you do should be to contact a lawyer if anyone else is involved in the injury.
Maybe you end up not needing the lawyer. Maybe the injury heals quickly. Many firms consult with no upfront fees, so you’re not sinking money in that you won’t get back. If it turns out the injury will last, then you need legal help.
2. Someone Else Is Involved
You can’t rely on other people not to blame you for an accident that wasn’t your fault – especially if it was their fault. Insurance companies also won’t care who’s a fault it is. They’ll do their best to pin a severe injury on whoever means that they don’t have to pay out a claim.
We live in a world where you need legal help to gather evidence and witness statements that back up your version of events. If the injury is due to someone not taking care of their property, you need evidence of what caused the injury before they fix it and pretend like it never happened. If it was a car accident that was someone else’s fault, you need video, images, and witnesses. If it’s a workplace injury, you need to know that your workplace is being responsible and won’t take retribution against you for filing workers comp.
This is about protecting you, your reputation, and your financial security, as well as securing any compensation that you’re owed due to someone else’s negligence.
3. You Face Financial Stress
When bills stack up, life gets stressful. When life gets stressful, it’s easier to feel overwhelmed, to let more bills stack up. Work gets harder. Your home life turns stressful. You feel more overwhelmed. More bills stack up. The cycle keeps repeating.
An injury can make everything harder, mentally and emotionally as well as physically. There’s no shame in that. That’s human. When you’re fighting physical, mental, and emotional hardships, the financial ones can feel crushing. They can take the wind out of your sails no matter what else you achieve.
When you need help financially after an injury, a lawyer can help you sort through the insurance claims, medical_ bills, and whether someone really does owe you.
A personal injury lawyer can communicate with all these parties asking for money for you. They can make sure you don’t pay a claim or a medical bill that you don’t really owe. Insurance companies will sometimes send a bill to you and hope you don’t notice they’re supposed to pay it. Hospitals will sometimes double-charge or itemize in a confusing way in order to get patients and insurance to overpay.
4. You’ve Lost Wages or Opportunities
Lost wages are too often overlooked as a result of an injury. Families figure that’s just the way it is. They’ll grit their teeth and get through it, even if it makes them more stressed, lash out at each other, miss out on vacations, opportunities, and ruins college plans or your ability to advance your career. That’s just the way the world is, you figure.
But it’s not the way the world is. Lost wages can be covered through different programs, depending on the nature of your injury. If workers comp isn’t fully taking care of lost wages for a workplace injury, that needs to be corrected by a lawyer on your side. If your lost wages are being taken care of, but your injury prevents you from pursuing career opportunities that you would have had, a personal injury lawyer can get you the financial compensation that’s otherwise been denied from you.
5. Know When to Call
When should I call a personal injury lawyer isn’t just a question of circumstance. It’s also a question of timing. Call before a deadline passes, not after you have no other choice. Call when you need evidence collected about dangerous property conditions or video or witnesses interviewed. Call before an insurance company talks to you and uses your polite statements against you when it comes to fault. Call when you’re still in control of the situation, or when you need to take back control.
The earlier you call, the less control of the situation is lost and the more you’re able to keep. That’s more evidence that can be collected for you, more accountability that insurance companies and hospitals are forced to maintain, more that you’re legally protected from others, more than you can set and reinforce the parameters of your claim, and yes – the stronger you make your case if you choose to sue.
There’s no point at which it’s too late unless you’ve already missed a deadline. Even then, there may still be a chance. Yet the earlier you call, the better. It protects you more and relieves the stress and burden of injury more to have a personal injury lawyer in Florida at the LaBovick Law Group in your corner as soon as you possibly can. Contact us today.
