Whether you’re involved in an auto accident, slip and fall, or another type of accident, how you react to the situation will determine how well you can recover from it. While you may not have been at fault, making even the slightest mistake can cost you the compensation you deserve. This is just one reason that hiring a personal injury attorney in Altamonte Springs is vital to your situation.
While most people know it’s important to hire a personal injury attorney after an accident, many don’t realize that when you hire the attorney is also important. If you don’t hire an attorney early enough, you may have to deal with insurance adjusters on your own. An insurance adjuster is trying to save money for his employer, which means getting you to sign off on a very low settlement. Without the advice of an attorney, you may not realize that you will need more to recover from the accident.
Conversely, if you hire an attorney earlier in the process, your lawyer will negotiate on your behalf. He will ensure any settlement offer is enough to cover your medical expenses, needs for long-term care, property damages, loss of wages, and pain and suffering. In many cases, the initial offer presented by the insurance adjuster won’t even be enough to cover all of the expenses related to your immediate needs for medical care.
If negotiations aren’t successful, it may be necessary to pursue damages in court, but, if you haven’t already hired an attorney, this process will be slowed down as you shop for personal injury lawyers. This extra delay is dangerous, because personal injury cases are subject to a statute of limitations. This means you only have a specified period of time to sue for damages. Depending on how long you have been negotiating for a settlement, the time you have left to sue may be running down.
Hiring a personal injury attorney early in the process means your lawyer will be familiar with the facts of your case that much sooner. If negotiations do fail, he will be prepared to initiate a lawsuit without much more preparation. Since time plays an important factor, hiring an attorney earlier in the claims process helps you protect your right to seek damages for the accident.
