Five Questions to Ask Your Chicago Personal Injury Lawyer

If you are going around looking for a Chicago personal injury lawyer to represent your interests, you need to make sure that you are getting the best service that you can get for yourself. You seriously do not want to end up spending hundreds or thousands of dollars just to lose a case. Worse still, you may find yourself being countersued for libel or other similar actions from the other party.

This is why you need to ask your Chicago personal injury lawyer these simple but surprisingly effective screening questions:

One: Do you specialize in personal injury cases?

No matter how good or reputable a general lawyer is, an attorney specializing in accidents still has the edge. A general lawyer has his hands dipped in a whole range of legal fields, but the specialization of a personal injury lawyer allows them to scrutinize the ins and outs of such cases. This makes them intimately familiar with all the rules and laws concerning cases of personal injury.

Two: What is your success rate?

Every single Chicago personal injury lawyer out there claims to be the best. The only thing that determines their skill is their success rate, which should be one of the first things you should look into when searching for a lawyer. Make sure to look beyond the numbers, however, as the context of the win-lose ratio is something you carefully need to check as well.

Three: Do you have trial experience?

While not all cases of personal injury will be escalated to the courts, it is still better to stick with a lawyer who has had trial experience. If just in case things get messy, the other party will not go for a settlement and is prepared to go to court, you will then realize the importance of hiring a lawyer experienced in handling trials.

Four: Do you know how to deal with insurance companies?

You can expect insurance to play a major role in handling the medical expenses. A Chicago personal injury lawyer must then be familiar with the laws regarding who will pay who, preferably to your advantage. They must also be able to communicate with the insurance companies of both parties in order to convince one, the other or both to direct how the proceedings will go.


Five: Can we get along both on a professional level and a personal level?

Even the best lawyer will not feel like helping you out if they dont like you. Likewise, you may not be so trusting or cooperative if you feel your lawyer does not work in your best interests. It is then essential for the both of you to at least develop an amicable working relationship in order to prevent distrust from destroying the professional relationship. You dont need to be heart-to-heart buddies, though. Simply respecting and acknowledging each others presence is enough for a lawyer-client relationship.

So there you have it, five simple questions to ask a Chicago personal injury lawyer before settling in with one or the other. Ask away, and you will get enough information to see for yourself whether hell work well for your case.