Don’t Speak To The Insurance Company
When you hire a personal injury attorney, you are hiring someone who will protect you, inform you of the law or laws that apply to your case, fight for you to recover the most you are entitled to recover and to deal with the insurance companies. I tell my clients, “Your job is to get better by following your doctor’s recommendations and treatment schedule and my job is to handle everything else.”The client’s role is simple:
• Be honest
• Communicate with your attorney
• Show up for all doctor’s appointments and communicate with your providers
• Focus on recovery
• When you have questions, ask your attorney
The attorney’s role in a personal injury case is very simple:
• Be honest
• Communicate with client, insurance adjusters, defense attorneys, doctors, experts, witnesses and more
• Learn the values of the insurance policies that apply to the case
• Answer all client questions
• Explain the applicable laws to the client’s case
• Discuss strategies, strong points and weak points of the case
• Plan on how to deal with the weak points in the case (every case has at least 1)
• Determine the value range of the case
• Aggressively work to maximize the client’s recovery either through settlement or trial
• And that is just the beginning of all the work we do for our clients.
Once we are hired, our work begins. One of the first things that we do is contact all insurance companies and let them know we are representing you, our client, and that they are to only speak with us.
What happens when an insurance company calls our client after they have received this letter? We tell our clients that if this happens, tell them “Richard Kennedy is representing me. Call him,” then hang up. Depending on what the insurance company is trying to accomplish by speaking with a client who hired Richard Kennedy as their personal injury attorney, they may be breaking ethical rules, Louisiana law, or acting in bad faith.
Remember, if you have been involved in a crash, we are here to protect, advise, and fight for you, so we can maximize your recovery.