Do I need a lawyer?
"Do I need a lawyer?" This is a common question many people ask after being seriously injured in a car wreck or other personal injury accident. In order to properly answer this question, I think it is helpful for an injured person who is wondering whether they need to hire an experienced Georgia injury lawyer to read the following actual post which recently appeared on a Georgia Personal Injury Lawyer listserve:
Help!
A potential client has $22,000 in medical expenes and needs surgery, but she just signed and faxed off a General Release to the other driver's insurance company today for $25,000 policy limit on her own and she now wants to hire me to puruse the $100,000 in remaining available Georgia Uninsured Motorist Coverage Insurance.
The sad reality is that this "potential client" no longer has a case because she signed away her rights to collect the additional $100,000 in uninsured motorist coverage that she was entitled to when she signed the release and sent it back to the at-fault driver's insurance company. This could have easily been avoided by executing a statutory "Limited Liability Release," which would have allowed the injured party to settle with the other driver's insurance company for the limits of that policy and preserve all rights to pursue their own uninsured motorist coverage limits.
This is another sad case in which an injured party did not retain an experienced injury lawyer and "settled" with the insurance company. If the client had retained a good lawyer, they would likely have gotten at least $125,000 for their case and maybe more. Instead, she gets $25,000 and the regret of knowing that she could have gotten fairly compensated, but did not. Bottom line: Experienced lawyers who are knowledgeable in the area of law in which they practice almost always are able to justify the fee you pay them. Many times, they are able to recover an enormous amount more than the client could have recovered on his or her own.
