Delaware Personal Injury Lawyer Ben Schwartz explains how to find the best personal injury lawyer…near me.

Hi I am Ben Schwartz

Today we are going to talk about a subject that for me keeps coming up over and over. The subject is, “how to find the best personal injury lawyer near me?” And when I say near me, I do not mean near me. I mean near you. So if you are in Golden Colorado or you are out in California or something, this is addressed to you wherever you are. It keeps coming up for me over and over because I think that people contact me from all over the country and they ask me if I can help them with their personal injury cases. I am mainly located in Delaware. My law firm handles Personal Injury cases but we are in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey, you know, we are Mid-Atlantic states. If it is a case in Georgia or it is a case in Florida, maybe we would fly to the client, meet with the client and handle that case in that area. But if it is something that is way out in Utah or something, we are not going to be likely, to be able to do that. So I have folks that contact me from all over the country. What I try to do is, I try not to just say oh no, we are not going to be able to help you. What I try to do is hook them up with an attorney where they are or where their accident happened. So I figured it might be helpful for people to see a video or you know read the transcript, read a blog of this video, and figure out for yourself how I would find an attorney. How I would find the best personal injury lawyer near me? If I were not available to handle my own case.

So first off, the number one thing is you got to categorize your case. You know it is not enough just to say I have a personal injury case. Okay well, what type of personal injury case is it? Are you talking about a car accident? Is it a rear-end car accident? Is it a tractor-trailer trucking case? You know these are different types of cases in my mind, different categories of cases in my mind because if it is a typical car accident case state law is going to apply. If it is a truck accident in interstate commerce, then there is another layer of federal law that is going to apply. Is it a fall accident, is it a dog bite, or a product defect case? Is it an on-the-job injury where it is a workers’ comp claim, is it medical malpractice, or is it nursing home negligence? There are a lot of categories of personal injury cases and you have got to figure out what category you think your personal injury case falls into. That is the first thing.

The second thing is, what geographic area are we talking about? You should probably be looking at the geographic area where the accident happened. So, for instance, if you are from California and you went to Utah on vacation and got in an accident in Utah with a Utah resident, you know Utah resident rear-ended you at a red light. You can not go back to California and sue that Utah resident in California. You know the court in California is not going to take jurisdiction you know not to take the case. You have to go to the place where the accident happened or the place where the defendant resides. So, if you know the category and you know the geographic area, you got half the information you need right there.

The third thing is to develop some leads on finding an attorney. Well, you could ask friends and family if they know any personal injury attorneys that handle this category of cases, in this geographic area. You could do a google search for personal injury lawyers in this category of cases, in this geographic area. You could try using an online directory like Avvo claim or lawyers calm to try and come up with some names of attorneys. And you could also, one thing that I really like is, you could try the State or County Bar Association lawyer referral service to get a referral to an attorney. And each state has a Bar Association, each county for the most part. Each country in the United States has a county-level Bar Association or Local Bar Association and oftentimes they have lawyer referral services, where you can get a free referral to an attorney at a reduced fee. You know maybe it is fifteen or thirty-five dollars but those local bar association lawyer referral services, are very valuable. The service they provide is very valuable and they are not going to refer you to an attorney that is having disciplinary problems and that is you know a bad seed. They are only referring to people that are relatively clean when it comes to disciplinary issues, ethical violations, etc.

The fourth thing you need to do is, you need to interview the attorney that you are going to pick, and I have to tell you that I think there are two types of attorneys. For personal injury cases, there are attorneys who are trial lawyers and there are attorneys who settle it for whatever you can get type of guys or girls. I think that those lawyers who settle cases for whatever the best offer is from the insurance company are doing a great disservice to their clients and the public in general; they ought to find something else to do for a living. If that, is you and you know who I am talking about? You know if you are one of these lawyers. Go teach school, become a college professor, become a third-grade teacher. Do something else for a living. Go draft contracts, become a truck driver. There is lots of stuff you can do. The problem with being this type of lawyer where you just settle for whatever they offer is, that you never get your client what they actually have coming to them. Now sure you might luck into a good settlement here and there but if you routinely settle your personal injury cases for whatever is being offered, you are never getting what could be offered and what could be offered is much much higher.

The second type of attorney, in my book, are trial lawyers. If you go to an attorney that is willing to try the case, who has a track record of trying cases, who will try the case all the way to the Supreme Court because they sink their teeth in, and they do not let go. That attorney is going to get you a much better settlement than the first type of guy that is just going to settle for whatever they offer. The reason is that that guy has leverage. He is going to develop leverage. He is going to force the insurance company into a much better settlement. So, when you interview these attorneys, you develop some leads of attorneys who can handle the case. you go and you interview them, and you ask them how many years you have been doing this. How many cases like mine have you handled? How many have you tried? Do you think you are going to try my case? What results have you gotten? Are you trying cases to juries? Are you trying cases to judges? How many cases did you try in the last five years? See what they have to say because that is going to separate the weak from the chaff. That is going to separate the trial lawyers from the settlement attorneys. And you do not want some guy that is going to get you whatever he can get you and that is going to be the way it goes. You want the guy that is going to try the case.

So, these are my tips on how to find the best personal injury lawyer near me. I hope that if you are in the unfortunate situation of having to try to find a lawyer for a personal injury case either for yourself or a family member. If you are in that situation, I hope that this video is helpful to you and if you have questions for me, my name is Ben Schwartz. You can always send me an email. My email address is mail@benschwartz.com

Thanks for watching!