When you are injured in a motor vehicle accident navigating the insurance regime for the province of Alberta can be an intimidating prospect for most people. You may already understand that it is typically a good idea to consult an injury lawyer. Still, without any context, you may wonder what it is that your injury lawyer actually does to move your case forward. This is an excellent question and one we receive often. Your injury lawyer’s day may vary but includes:
Negotiating On Your Behalf
One of the first things that your injury lawyer will do on a case as it progresses is to begin to order medical records. Once a sufficient number of records have been obtained, your injury lawyer may begin speaking to the other driver’s insurance to negotiate a settlement for the injuries you have sustained in the accident.
What this practically looks like would include settlement proposals which will typically review the medical records related to your file and then make recommendations for a settlement offer based on the pertinent information.
Investigation
Your James H. Brown and Associates Injury Lawyer has an extensive network of experts to draw on in the course of your case. This includes engineers, medical specialists, private investigators, and economists. Your injury lawyer will spare no time in beginning the investigation process for your claim. Where necessary, experts will be retained as soon as possible to evaluate the situation and ensure that your case is ironclad.
Ensuring Access to Treatment
A key part of your personal injury case involves attending with your doctor and attending for appropriate treatments as recommended by your doctor. Attending for treatment is key to your case; failure to attend can result in significant deductions from your ultimate compensation. This is why your insurance policy is so important; your auto policy contains something called accident benefits or “no-fault benefits,” which will pay for certain treatments not covered by the healthcare system. This would include things such as psychology or physiotherapy. Where you are having issues obtaining approval for a treatment that you need for your rehabilitation, your James H. Brown and Associates Injury Lawyer is prepared to advocate tirelessly for you to ensure that you have access to the resources you need as you navigate the road to recovery.
Questioning
Depending on the facts of your case, your file may require questioning of yourself and/or the other party.
Where questioning is required in a case the plaintiff bringing the claim will always be questioned. This will involve the lawyer for the other driver’s insurer asking you a series of questions about the case. Questions such as: “how did your accident happen?”, “What kind of injuries did you sustain?” and “how have they affected you?” Your James H. Brown and Associates Injury lawyer will be beside you every step of the way through this process, defending your rights whenever they feel that the lawyer for the insurer is infringing upon your rights.
Additionally, where there are dispuites as to who is responsible for the accident the defendant may also be questioned by your injury lawyer. This will generally include your injury lawyer asking for details about the accident to try and reconstruct the narrative. Through this process, your injury lawyer tries to get admissions from the defendant, which will hopefully serve to prove the defendant’s responsibility in whole or part for the accident.
Mediation
If you have a particularly complex file, there is the possibility that your case will go to “mediation.” Mediation is a formalized negotiation process facilitated by a third party; often this will be an ex-judge or a former lawyer with a large amount of experience. The mediator’s job is to assist the parties in seeing the bigger picture in terms of the strengths or weaknesses of their case; in this way, the mediator seeks to bring the parties to a compromise to reach a settlement.
In preparation for mediation, your James H. Brown and Associates Injury Lawyer will have created a legal brief for use as submission to the mediator. The goal of the brief is to persuade the mediator to come closer to your lawyer’s evaluation of the case. Drafting a brief of this kind may involve extensive research dependent on the extent of the legal issues at play in your case. Additionally, the brief will often seek to address any deficiencies your injury lawyer perceives in your case.
Once the mediation formally begins, your injury lawyer’s job is to make oral submissions at the beginning of the hearing, then advocate on your behalf in answering any concerns raised by the mediator. However, your lawyer’s key role when it comes to mediation will be coming up with offers to bounce back and forth between yourself and the defence counsel.
Trial
Despite what you see on television, almost no personal injury case will go to trial, the trial process is extremely costly and time intensive. Additionally, it make take years before you can get your case to trial. However, in the rare instances where a case has to go to trial for a proper outcome, your James H. Brown and Associates Injury lawyer is very willing to advocate on your behalf and step in front of a judge to make your submissions. This willingness to go to trial is why we have become Alberta’s precedent-setting injury law firm and part of why we feel so confident in our ability to secure excellent compensation for our clients. Having the resources, experience, and ability to competently run a trial can dramatically change the landscape in terms of negotiation with insurers.
In most cases, the insurer will not want to go to trial either. This means that your injury lawyer’s willingness to see your case to its conclusion, regardless of what steps it might entail to get to that point, is essential to be taken seriously during negotiations. Where the insurer does not think you are willing to do whatever it takes to get an equitable result for your case that will be reflected with smaller settlement offers, as the insurer will know that your firm is not willing to expend the resources to see your case through trial if that becomes necessary.
James H. Brown and Associates Are Here For You
If you have been injured in a motor vehicle accident and are unsure what to do next, contact the precedent-setting injury law team at James H. Brown and Associates. We offer free injury claim evaluations and can answer any question you may have regarding injury law. Contact us today!
