What Does a Personal Injury Lawyer Do?

"I don't need an ambulance chaser!"

After most car accidents, the most urgent concern for a majority of people is getting their car fixed or replaced. Without a car, life comes to a screeching halt the moment that you can no longer get to work, run the kids to day care, or get any place that life’s demands require of you.

TV shows and late night personal injury commercials depict gruesome images of catastrophic forty car pileups with bodies strewn about the road. As a society we are lead to believe that these are the only injuries that matter, the only injuries that merit the involvement of a lawyer. While certainly those situations would merit the involvement of a personal injury attorney, a small pain in the lower back, the neck or injuries involving the spine can have long term and lasting effects when neglecting proper treatment.

Consider these excerpts from WebMD:

“Surprisingly, the speed of the cars involved in the accident or the amount of physical damage to the car may not relate to the intensity of neck injury. Speeds as low as 15 miles per hour can produce enough energy to cause whiplash in a passenger in your car, whether or not they are wearing a seat belt.”

“These signs and symptoms may occur immediately or minutes to hours after the initial injury. The sooner after the injury that symptoms develop, the greater the chance of serious damage: neck pain, neck swelling, tenderness along the back of your neck, muscle spasms (in the side or back of your neck), difficulty moving your neck around, headache, pain shooting from your neck into either shoulder or arm.”

What About the Victim?

Often the victim is concerned about being able to pay the doctor's fee. Rather than having to hassle with co-pays and medical insurance coverage, the victim would rather take their chances with healing on their own. This is a risk that a victim should not be faced with. With a personal injury attorney, you usually will not be faced with this predicament.

We can all agree that in an ideal world, when you are in an accident, the just and correct thing to do would be to put you in a position as though the accident had never occurred. Unfortunately, we cannot turn back the clock. We cannot take away the pain, give you back your missed days of work, or make sure your kids made it to soccer practice. The only legitimate resource we have to attempt to make it close to equal is money. It sounds callous, almost greedy. But the reality is that we simply cannot restore any party to a pre-accident condition. No one pretends to believe, the legal profession included, that money will magically make you whole. However it will help to soften the blow; it does make it possible for you to cover the costs of medical bills you have or will have and allow for you to be compensated for any injuries you would not have otherwise sustained.

Do not let the cost of treating a neck or back injury deter you from being properly cared for. Life is too long and too valuable to spend future years in pain because of what seemed to be a minor injury at the time.

As a personal injury attorney, I do not charge for my services unless I recover for you. I aggressively work on your behalf. I want you to be as close as possible to your pre-accident condition, and I will fight to get you there.