It’s important to be appropriately aggressive. This means pressing issues that are going to increase the amount paid by the insurer and de-emphasizing the rest.
It also means knowing your audience. In most personal injury cases the audience is the adjuster from the at-fault person’s insurance company. The adjuster will probably be the one with decision making authority before, during and after trial.
Most adjusters–especially in bigger cases–have dealt with thousands (if not tens of thousands) of personal injury cases. They work with people who have been blinded, crippled, burned from head to toe, lost their parents, lost their children, lost their spouses, etc. Against this backdrop it’s important to describe your injuries in a measured voice.
Most clients live through accidents. They return to work and school. They can do some, if not all, of the things they did before the accident.
Against this backdrop it’s much more effective to emphasize that clients are doing the best they can despite your injuries rather than leaning toward more dramatic descriptions. Injured people who overplay their hands come off sounding whiny and end up recovering a lot less money than people who take their injuries in stride and present stories of hope in the face of adversity rather than self-absorbed melodramas.
The Legal Examiner and our Affiliate Network strive to be the place you look to for news, context, and more, wherever your life intersects with the law.
Comments for this article are closed.