(Each case is different; no result is promised).
I am often asked by lawyers and others how we consistently get such good results on our cases.
After working for more than 30 years to be the best personal injury lawyer I can be, I have learned certain skills, strategies, and trial tactics that help maximize the settlement numbers and trial verdicts and shift the odds in favor of a positive result. Experience and expertise are invaluable. There are two things that really help produce results.
The first piece is simply how good is your lawyer. This makes a huge difference.
The second is the amount of time my team and I spend on each case. There are two types of lawyers who represent injured plaintiffs. The first type is the disorganized lawyer who wings it and hopes for a good result. Unlike an insurance defense lawyer who works for the insurance company, who must be organized, bills by the hour, and must report periodically, “Plaintiffs Lawyers” work on a contingency fee. We (99.9% of the time) do not bill by the hour. There is nobody (Like an insurance company wanting to make sure the hourly charges for time spent on a case are reasonable) checking up on us. If you are lazy, there is nobody looking over your shoulder to make sure you are doing the best for your client. For a lazy and disorganized lawyer, it is easy to not pay attention to the case and to not “Work the case up”.
It is not uncommon for a lawyer to sign up a new client/case, place that file in a file storage drawer, and not again look at the file until a year later. It is common that the client never talks to the lawyer again (and maybe only talks to a staff member from time to time). If you sign up with one of those organizations (Not a law firm but an organization that advertises that they will handle your personal injury case and then they refer it out to various law firms that pay them for the case or for “leads”), it is possible you will never speak to a lawyer; and the person they sent to your home to get you to sign papers (or by zoom) has little to no legal experience.
If you are represented by one of these “lazy lawyers or law firms”, the chance that your case will have a good result becomes less likely.
The second type of lawyer (Much less common) is the lawyer who really knows their craft and spends time on the case. It is much harder to work cases this way. There are only so many hours in a workday. There is a limit on how many cases a lawyer can work on when they actively “Work their cases” (instead of letting the files sit and gather dust).
So how do we get such consistently great results?
We do it by constantly trying to get better at the practice of law and by spending the time needed to properly work the case up. This is not a secret. It is actually quite simple. It is simple, but it is not easy.
Let me give some examples. We like to reach out to our clients and check on them. Are their injuries getting better, getting worse, or staying the same? Let’s say somebody is in Physical Therapy. If they are getting better, then staying in physical therapy is reasonable and they are doing the right thing for themselves and the case. (And we note the file). On the other hand, let’s say that somebody is in physical therapy and we check in with them. We ask if they are feeling better, worse, or staying the same. They say, “I am a little worse and starting to have frequent nauseous, and loud noises really bother me”. These two symptoms are possible signs of a concussion. If your lawyer has the expertise to know that you and your case have benefitted; however, the lazy lawyer will not have any clue that you have been nauseous and that loud noises are bothering you because your file is sitting untouched in that dusty file drawer.
In the above- example, the lawyer can suggest a brain injury specialist to consult with, possibly obtain a brain MRI, etc. We then find out, for example, that there was an undiagnosed concussion (Sadly common). Not only does this help the injured client get the medical treatment help they need, but what does it do for the case? It makes the case worth more money because there is now a diagnosed concussion which makes the case worth more money. This concussion would not have been discovered had the lawyer not “Worked the case up and spent time on the file” as opposed to letting the file gather dust in a drawer.
I have literally had hundreds of cases just like the above example. As you can imagine, working cases up like this limits the amount of cases that I can work on. We by necessity must reject approximately 15 cases that contact us for every one case we can work on. The reason is that if we worked on all cases that contacted us, then we could not spend the needed amount of time on each case and get the results that we do.
We will only work on your case if we feel in good faith we have the time to properly spend on the case because it is not fair to somebody who needs a lawyer, for the lawyer to agree to represent that person unless the lawyer actually has the time to work on the case. Of course, given my 30 years of experience and results over the years, we generally are only able to work on the more serious injury cases and tend to refer the smaller cases to younger lawyers who are still learning.
We cannot work on everyone’s case, but my commitment to my clients is that if we accept your case and agree to represent you, we will take the time and provide the expertise to work your case up properly and do all within our power to get you the absolute best possible result.
If you or a family member have been seriously injured or suffered wrongful death (because of the negligence of another), please give us a call, so we can look at your case and see if we can help.
Law Office of Adam Sorrells
60 Independence Circle, Suite 100
530-893-9900
Chico, CA 95973
www.chicopersonalinjury.com