Resources and Expenses
Expenses are a critical issue in having any personal injury case in your firm. A criticism of a lot of attorneys would be that when they have a client come into their office and say “I will fight for you!”
The lawyers that are perennial winners, they are well funded and that comes from years too. The young lawyer coming out of school or the lawyer that’s around for 5 or 10 years, he doesn’t have the billfold. I excuse the expression, but it’s that simple.
To be able to take on these cases, you have got to have the resources for those cases.
When they’re trying to out spend you, you simply have to put the money up. And people that are hurt, people that are hurt, they don’t have the money to hire an engineer or to even pay the doctors. You know, a lot of people don’t understand that your doctor, who has been taking care of you, when he comes to court, it’s a big expense.
You effectively shut down his office. That doctor is a good person, male or female, and that doctor, when you shut him down, he should be compensated fairly for the day that he would’ve been working.
If it’s a surgeon, you know, what is very common, is to pay a surgeon, to walk into any of our district courts in the state of Colorado, $5000, $6000, $8000. If you have several doctors, then it’s $30000 and $40000 and I have to be able to generate the expense money to be able try the cases effectively. What I would say is that most lawyers can not.
The insurance companies, when they see a particular lawyer and I think I’m one of those lawyers. They see a lawyer and they say, this lawyer is different then the other 90% or 95%.
One, he wins. Two, he’s well funded. Three, we can pay an awful lot of money.
When you have a lawyer that tries a lot of cases and does this successfully, it actually gets easier to settle cases and to settle for maximum value. It gets easier and do you know, I like trying cases, but I certainly like to settle a case if my client is satisfied and the amount of compensation reflects the amount of injury and damages and losses.
