Changing Attorneys in Personal Injury Cases

Ed Van Dorn

Contributor

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We often get calls from people with personal injury claims who are dissatisfied with the lawyers who represent them or have represented them. If the caller has a valid claim and a valid gripe against their present lawyer we will consider taking over the case. The real problem occurs when the case is already closed and the caller has accepted a settlement they felt was inadequate based on the lawyer's insistence. In those cases, most of the time it is too late to help the aggrieved client.

We uniformly ask these people why they didn't call us earlier and most often get the response that they didn't know they could change lawyers once their case was started. This is an unfortunate misconception.

The fact is that a client may change lawyers whenever they want to and for whatever reason they choose. In personal injury cases this usually doesn't even require the payment of extra fees depending on the law firm you hire to replace your old lawyer. Our firm has a policy that if we take on a case from another lawyer we will work out any fee disputes with that other lawyer without the client having to pay any extra fees.

A personal injury victim with a valid serious claim should not feel compelled to go forward with a lawyer that they are not completely satisfied with.