Across the country there are a number of outstanding personal injury law firms which do incredible work for their clients. A personal injury lawyer will represent those who have been injured in accidents which weren’t they fault, and often these have had a profound impact on their lives. Whilst the awarding of compensation is not perfect, it is the best that the legal system can do in helping these victims to move forward with their lives.
Despite the great work which so many injury law firms do, these lawyers in particular often get a bad rap from the public. This has been more prominent in the last 15 years, and here is exactly why the public perception of these individuals has changed somewhat, unjustly in our view.
Charlatans
Unfortunately this area of the law has been mistreated by many lawyers who have behaved like charlatans when it comes to personal injury. The reason for this is that the large majority of cases are settled out of court, and that means that most come down to a negotiation between the lawyer and the insurance company of the liable party. What many lawyers have turned this into is a shakedown, and they know that if they accuse a company of being liable, and have a little bit of evidence, that they may be able to get a payout for their clients. It isn’t worth insurance companies taking on a huge amount of cases, even if they are not liable, so they often make small offers which are eventually accepted.
Marketing Behaviors
Such has been the aggressive nature of the commercials which we have seen from a small percentage of personal injury lawyers, they give the impression that they are trying to convince people to remember an accident which they never even had. You will have no doubt seen this in and around your hometown, or even on TV when the commercial break comes. The way that the adverts are phrased are not positive and they essentially tell people that if they have even had a hint of an accident that there is money to made. This is not why personal injury law was set up and it certainly isn’t why we have compensation in place. The reality is that these injury lawyers are working for themselves and not for the good of the clients.
TV Perception
Unfortunately because of the behaviors which we have mentioned in this post, TV shows often use personal injury lawyers as the butt of their jokes, further pushing the notion that there is something wrong with this branch of the law. The reality is however that there are only a very small percentage of lawyers who act in this way, and the large majority of them are in fact good people with good intentions, looking to represent actual clients who have found themselves in trouble.
It is important that we start two change the narrative when it comes to the great work which personal injury lawyers do.