If you’ve been injured in an accident in Florida, should you hire a personal injury lawyer? This is a critical question, and you need to ensure that you make the right choice. Accidents can prove incredibly expensive, and if you are dealing with serious injuries, you could be facing a variety of long-term non-financial costs as well. With this in mind, in most cases, it will be well worth talking to a Florida personal injury lawyer about your legal rights.
7 Ways a Personal Injury Lawyer Can Help You After an Accident in Florida
Why should you talk to a Florida personal injury lawyer about your legal rights after an accident? Here are just some of the ways an experienced lawyer can help you in this scenario:
1. Determining if You Have a Personal Injury Claim
Many types of accidents can justify filing a personal injury claim under Florida law. With that said, not all accidents will justify claims for just compensation. When you hire a Florida personal injury lawyer, your lawyer will be able to examine the facts of your case and determine if you have grounds to take legal action.
This costs you nothing out-of-pocket. Your initial consultation is completely free, and it is your opportunity (and your lawyer’s opportunity) to find out if you have a case to pursue. If you do, then you can continue forward with the next steps in the process. If you don’t, then at least you can feel confident that you made an informed decision.
2. Determining How Much You May Be Able to Recover
If you have grounds to pursue a personal injury claim, you will also want to know how much you may be able to recover. Even if you technically have grounds to file a claim, if your losses from the accident are minimal, going through the process might not be worth it (and, in the case of a car accident, filing a personal injury protection (PIP) claim might be enough).
On the other hand, if you are facing significant or long-term losses, this is something that you need to know. As we said above, serious accidents can prove incredibly expensive, and they can have various non-financial consequences as well. If you have grounds to take legal action, these are all costs for which you can (and should) seek just compensation.
3. Gathering the Evidence Needed to Prove Your Legal Rights
Filing a personal injury claim requires evidence of what happened and who (or what company) is to blame. This requires a prompt and thorough investigation—and this makes it critical to hire a Florida personal injury lawyer promptly if you have a claim. Once you hire a personal injury lawyer to represent you, your lawyer will be able to get to work immediately gathering and preserving the evidence needed to prove your legal rights.
While you might have some evidence in your possession (i.e., photos or videos from the accident scene), proving a personal injury claim can require various other forms of evidence as well. Your lawyer will be able to determine what evidence is available, and your lawyer will be able to assess whether this evidence is sufficient to establish a claim under Florida law.
4. Assisting You with Proving the Costs of Your Injuries
Along with proving the cause of your injuries, filing a successful personal injury claim also involves proving the consequences. In other words, you also need evidence of how much you are entitled to recover. When it comes to the financial costs of your injuries, this means that you will need to be able to prove your present and future medical bills, prescription costs, and other out-of-pocket expenses.
In Florida, accident victims can also seek just compensation for their lost income and benefits. Here, too, this covers both present and future losses. While adding up your out-of-pocket costs to date can be a relatively straightforward process (as long as you have adequate documentation), calculating your future losses requires experienced legal representation.
5. Determining What Constitutes “Just Compensation” for Your Pain and Suffering
Not only do you need to calculate your financial losses, but you need to calculate “just compensation” for your non-financial losses as well. These include your pain and suffering, emotional trauma, and loss of enjoyment of life (among others). Since you can’t simply place a dollar value on these losses, you need to determine what is a reasonable amount to seek based on your individual circumstances.
There are established methods for calculating the “value” of non-financial losses, and you’ll need to use one of these established methods to seek an insurance settlement or prove your legal rights in court. Here, too, experienced legal representation is essential.
6. Dealing with the Insurance Companies for You
Regardless of how you got injured, seeking just compensation will most likely involve dealing with the insurance companies. This is not easy, and you need to be very careful. You also need to be able to effectively present all of the evidence that is available. When you hire a Florida personal injury lawyer to represent you, your lawyer can deal with the insurance companies on your behalf.
7. Helping You Decide When (and If) to Accept a Personal Injury Settlement
Finally, while most successful personal injury claims end with out-of-court settlements, you need to make an informed decision about when (and if) to settle. If a fair settlement offer is not on the table, you may need to take your claim to court.
By calculating your present and future losses and assessing the strength of your claim, your lawyer will be able to help you make informed decisions about settlement. If you don’t receive a settlement offer that you are willing to accept, then the next step is to start preparing your case for trial. This is a complex process of its own that requires representation from an experienced Florida personal injury lawyer who is intimately familiar with the facts of your case.
