CNBNews

(Gloucestercitynews.net)(August 27, 2020)--Being a personal injury lawyer specialist is different from a divorce lawyer, or any other kind. It requires a certain collection of skills, knowledge, experience, and perseverance to get the best outcome for the client and the law firm, respectively. Here are a few of the qualities that a personal injury lawyer must possess to be successful.

Experience Counts

Experience in dealing with previous types of injury cases is a must. Initially, a lawyer will often work at a firm that’s more of a generalist but later move to a specialist firm with a history of successful personal injury cases.

Gaining experience working with senior lawyers on injury cases provides well-rounded knowledge. Moving up to managing cases with guidance from the larger team is also beneficial. It helps if the law firm has a multi-decade track history with personal injury cases. With the Brown and Crouppen Law Firm, for example, they have 5 decades of experience and have won over $850m on behalf of their clients. 

Patience & Perseverance

The negotiation period can become protracted in liability lawsuits, personal injury cases, wrongful death, and medical malpractice suits. 

Many times, the parties cannot agree, at which point it becomes necessary to actively pursue a lawsuit and to proceed to court in search of a fair settlement. 

Court cases, rather than settlement discussions, require considerably more time. It can require years to get the desired outcome when the defendants are prepared to get into an entrenched position and won’t see either logic or reason. 

Compassion

With compassion, there are differing opinions on this one. From a personal perspective, the injured party is looking for some degree of sympathy and understanding along with retribution and/or financial compensation. 

Therefore, while being empathetic to an injured client goes a long way to developing a good relationship, it’s also necessary to be largely unemotional in claim negotiations to secure the best outcome. 

Learning the Art of Negotiation

Some people are just bad negotiators. They fold at the first low-ball number suggested even when their stated plan was not to accept anything less than three times the amount offered. An effective personal injury lawyer must learn to have a ‘poker face.'

Just like with most negotiations, the other party will intentionally play down their client’s culpability to make a low offer seem reasonable. This type of lawyer must become a fair but strong negotiator to obtain the desired settlement. 

Understanding Civil vs Criminal

It’s far more serious in either wrongful death cases or those where gross malice is present. Gross malice may exist where it was in some way intentional that the client lost their life. It might be an unprovoked attack or intentional negligence. 

However, it’s worth bearing in mind that these are the most egregious of cases and require considerable experience, including but not limited to trial experience, to handle them. Often, these cases are complex enough that a full legal team will work on it. At a later time, the authorities may become involved. 

As you can see, it’s a mix of useful qualities and experience that’s required by a personal injury lawyer. Fortunately, no single case is ever the same, which keeps things interesting too.