There is no such thing as a bad question, not in school nor in legal matters. Asking questions is paramount to understanding how laws work. If you have some questions, ask away, but you may find answers below.

Do You Have a Claim?
Perhaps the biggest question is whether you have a personal injury claim or not. It depends on the nature of the claim and is not a decision to make by yourself. Foremost is consulting with a lawyer. Even if you don’t necessarily hire them, an experienced lawyer can quite often explain what will happen. Maybe he or she will take your case, maybe not.

You can also take some steps on your own. Is fault clear in the personal injury case? Has the other party agreed they were at fault? Have you received settlement offers already? These can quite often show if your case is valid. For example, if the police report in a car accident, with corroboration from witnesses, says the other driver was at fault, you have a case. If you suffered little to no injury, it may not be worth your time to pursue a claim. However, if you need compensation because of a serious injury, you can often get damages greater than you might think.

Finding a Lawyer
How do you find a lawyer? This is not a race; personal injury claims take time. You should, for one, wait some months before filing a claim. If you suffer serious physical injury, you just don’t know what the full extent will be unless you and your doctor give it time. You might develop a new problem, mental or physical, months after the accident. If you accept damages before that, you are quite often out of luck.

Proof
Your lawyer’s job is to find relevant proof. Sometimes it will be quite easy to prove fault. In most car accidents, proof is clear, even if both sides are at fault to some degree. A doctor will also give you proof. If you suffer a severe injury causing great pain and damage, your doctor can prove it in a court of law.

Low Offer
One common tactic defendants like insurers use is to give you a low settlement offer. They expect you to counter with another offer, but hope you take the first one. This is often before you even get a lawyer (and they know that). You should take no offer without consulting with a lawyer experienced in your type of personal injury case. Some forgo a lawyer, take the offer, and end up with a fraction of their deserved amount.

Going to Court
Should you take a settlement or go to court for more? Most personal injury lawsuits are settled out of court, and for good reason: lawyer fees can be high, especially for the defendant. You can save some money by taking a fair settlement offer. Your lawyer typically takes a cut of what you get in damages, though it’s less if you settle before court. However, do not be afraid to go to court if your case is strong. It can pay dividends. Just be sure to consult with your lawyer before making big decisions.

Lawyers sometimes get a bad name for charging high fees. True, charging $300/hour for consulting or legal advice can be too high for many of us, but when you are paying for value, you can get value. If you pay cheaply, it’s unlikely you’ll get much better than a cheap service. That’s in fact the basic idea of this blog guide: that lawyer fees, especially personal injury lawyer fees, are reasonable when you consider your options.

A Good Personal Injury Lawyer Gives You Options
Let’s start by explaining what a lawyer gives you. If you have ever watched a legal show, yes it can seem simple and fun. However, it’s not much like that in most court cases. There are applications to be filed, claims to be made, negotiations to begin, judges to negotiate with, and battles.

A good lawyer gives you the best options by explaining all this to you, giving you the options along with his or her opinion. This is invaluable. If you have no legal experience, and expect to win a tough case yourself by simply telling the truth, you just won’t know where to begin.

In effect, a good personal injury lawyer explains to you if this is a winner. How? Often by saying whether or not he or she will take your case.

A Professional Personal Injury Lawyer Only Wins When You Do
Usually you only want to hire a personal injury lawyer if you have a winner. It can be too expensive to pay your lawyer during a process which may take months to years. If you have a winner, a lawyer will likely waive the fee and offer to take a portion of the settlement or claim.

If you get an offer before you even hire a lawyer, you may consider taking it. Having a lawyer makes your case much stronger, and quite often leads to a better settlement. If the offer is too low, you take it, then suffer further injury, you have no legal recourse. And if you get a settlement offer, your lawyer reviews and accepts it, because he or she has not been inside a court room and fought your case there, you pay less.

Lawyers Pay Too
Simply put, you don’t just walk into court and ask for a job. It takes years if not decades for a good personal injury lawyer to come out of law school and get enough experience to be valuable to you.

A Lawyer Has Costs
Rarely is this a one person show. A lawyer may have an entire staff helping with your case. They may consult with other lawyers. He or she may have to spend valuable time researching your case. For example, there might be other cases where an injury occurred, making clear proof the entity is at fault; this occurs in manufacturing all the time, as well as hospitals.

If You Win, How Much?
If you win, your lawyer fee will be more than worth it. You can save yourself a lot of hassle simply by having a professional handle the case. You can also do some good. If you win a lawsuit against a hospital who botched an operation, you might ensure no one else is hurt like that. If you win a lawsuit against a pharmaceutical company who hurt hundreds, that’s justice.

If You Lose, What Next?
Sometimes even the good guys lose, but it’s important to know you have legal rights to a review of any decisions made in court. This is what appeals court is about. Usually you want to take a complete look at your case with your lawyer; you just might not have enough proof. But in appeals court, your personal injury lawyer can show his or her legal expertise and help you turn this into a winner.

If you believe someone else is at fault for an accident or mistake, or if you have determined you are at fault, there are some points to know.

This guide gives the essentials on determining who might be at fault. It also gives tips on how to handle situations where you are at fault or where you have case for a lawsuit.

Role of An Accident
You can prove fault in a variety of ways. In personal injury cases where someone is hurt, the injured person obviously has a claim. For example, you hit someone by running a stop sign. They did not look to see if you were coming, but because your duty was to stop, you are at fault. This is an example of how complex the event can be. If you do stop, then drive, and you still hit the person, because he or she made a mistake, you might both have some fault.

If the Injured was Careless
Using the previous example with both being responsible, fault may swing both ways in an accident where driver and pedestrian both made mistakes. Therefore, the injured would have less damages to claim in court or in a settlement with you. If you make the mistake and it is completely your fault, you pay the bill. If both sides have roles in the accident, the bill is much less.

Employer Fault
While car accidents are just one form of personal injury law, let’s consider another similar example. A company truck runs a red light, hits you, and you get whiplash. In this example, the company is often also legally responsible for the mistake. Therefore, you may get more money. It does not matter if the employer made the mistake or not; if an employee they hired and allowed to drive made a mistake, the result is liability.

Property Accident
If you rent an apartment and something bad occurs such as you slip and fall on a piece of loose floor, you might also have a personal injury case. Remember these are just the general uses of accident and personal injury law. If the apartment or building is not kept safe, the owner can be held responsible, no matter if he or she was aware of the problem or not.

Defective Product Claim
Some common problem are food contamination and medication mistakes. If the manufacturer of a food sells something spoiled, a market sells it, both the manufacturer and seller are at fault. If you take a medicine which is not supposed to have the side effects it has, you can sue the company who made the drug and the company who directly sold it to you (the pharmacy).

There is a lot of room for variation in these examples. But it gives you a general idea on the most common cases where someone is at fault for a mistake. Just because someone is at fault does not mean you will always get results. And in some situations you may not want to sue. Because this process can be lengthy, ensure you know the laws. The best person to explain this process is a professional personal injury lawyer. He or she will likely only be paid if you win; if you have a winnable case, most personal injury lawyers will tell you by offering to take it.