Depending on the type of case you have, you may not actually need a lawyer. If your case is small, then there’s a good chance that you could get by on your own without having to retain one. Your case is a “smaller” if it meets the following criteria: (1) your vehicle was only lightly damaged, e.g., bumper scratch/dent, (2) the medical treatment was for a “soft tissue” injury and lasted only 2-3 months, (3) the bills were at least $3,000 (this is a Utah-state minimum level to make a claim) and were no more than $5,000, and (4) the injuries were not permanent. Cases that can qualify as “small” cases are typically rear-end collisions where there is only damage to the rear bumper that is less than $1,000.00, where the injured person only saw a chiropractor and was diagnosed as having a “soft tissue” injury, who recovered fairly quickly and had no long-term permanent effects. In these cases, it is possible to settle them yourselves, and quite honestly, people do this every day.

In fact, right or wrong, consumers settle larger cases with the insurance company every day.

If you have a small case, and your bills are more than $3,000, you will first want to finish your treatment and get “released” from your doctor. Frequently doctors, such as chiropractors, will tell you that you have reached “maximum medical improvement,” or MMI. At this point, they will release you from treatment and tell you to come back if you have any problems. Once you are released, you will want to collect the bills and records from all medical providers who have treated you for your injury. If you were initially transported by ambulance and were treated in the ER of the hospital, you will want to collect these records as well. (An exception to collecting these bills and records is if you signed the at-fault insurance company’s medical authorization and gave them authority to collect your bills and records for you-generally a bad idea!) After you have collected your records, you will want to write a letter to the insurance company with your “demand” or request for settlement.

In your letter, you should ask to be reimbursed for your medical bills (and future medical bills if applicable) as well as the pain and suffering you went through and/or expect to go through in the future.

You can present your own offer or ask them to make you an offer. The insurance company will then contact you and give you their offer. In most cases, their offer will be less than what you were hoping for. You are free at that point to make a counter offer and to “negotiate” with them. Keep in mind, that the settlement will include the at-fault insurance company paying back your own car insurance for the $3,000 that they already paid toward your medical bills. (Your insurance has he right to be reimbursed.) So, for example, the insurance company might say that they will settle your case for the cost of medical bills plus $500 to $1,000 for your pain and suffering. They might offer you less. Maybe more. But this is probably in the range of what you might see if you negotiate with them directly for this kind of “small” case. If you are negotiating a larger case, you should expect more than this. Some law firms offer a free service where they will review the offer from the insurance company, compare it against your records, and let you know whether the insurance company is making a fair offer or not. Now if your case is larger, you will really want to carefully consider whether you want to settle it on your own. Generally speaking, the larger your case, the more important it is to retain a Utah Personal Injury Attorney that is familiar with personal injury cases. The reason for this is that they know, or should know, what the value of these cases is. And, they have the ability to “push the envelope” to get you the compensation that is fair. The result is that they can remove the decision on what is fair value for the case from the insurance adjuster to a jury. Insurance companies know that the typical person trying to resolve their own case does not have this ability. And you should also consider that even when an attorney charges their typical 33 1/3 percent contingency fee, the injured person is still more likely to come out again than if they went it alone. A study that was done in 1999 by the Insurance Research Counsel, a non-profit agency, confirmed this. The study found that people who hired a lawyer received on average 3 1/2 times more compensation than those persons who settled their own cases. These findings go against those insurance adjusters who tell the injured claimants that shouldn’t hire a lawyer because the amount of money to them will be less.

If your case is larger, you should ask the attorney you are considering hiring whether they will “guarantee” to you the amount offered by the insurance company. In our office, for example, I tell our clients that I will not penalize them for allowing us to help them in their case, and if for some reason the insurance company isn’t offering significantly more, than they are “guaranteed” the amount offered by the insurance company, even if we have to cut our attorney fee to do it. I can tell you that in the cases where we have made this guarantee, the client has always ended up with more money in their pocket than if they had done it alone. Ask the attorney you are thinking of using whether they will do this for you.